Acoustic whole blood imaging flow cytometry for rare cell identification

Project Information

BLOODFLOW

Grant agreement ID: 101187914

DOI

10.3030/101187914

Project closed

EC signature date 5 September 2024

Start date 1 October 2024

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

LUNDS UNIVERSITET
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BLOODFLOW (Acoustic whole blood imaging flow cytometry for rare cell identification)

Reporting period: 2024-10-01 to 2026-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project addresses the need for new tools to detect and monitor rare cells in blood, such as circulating tumor cells. Breast and prostate cancer are the most common malignant cancers in women and men, respectively. Metastasis is the main threat in these cancers since it turns a curable local disease into a chronic lethal disease. With emerging new targeting therapies, there is an unmet clinical need for improved prognostication, treatment prediction and treatment monitoring, where circulating tumor cells enumeration have potential to become a valuable tool. But circulating tumor cells are very rare and the background of other blood cells is vast, which makes it extremely challenging to classify and count these cells. Researchers will develop acoustic whole-blood imaging flow cytometry in which circulating tumor cells are drawn out directly from blood using an acoustic field. This will enable unbiased imaging and enumeration of circulating tumor cells through a panel of fluorescent antibodies with minimal pre-treatment.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Researchers investigated some current uncertainties on the path to further development and future commercialisation of this technology. To demonstrate feasibility, the researchers developed fast multichannel fluorescence imaging capabilities compatible with an acoustofluidic chip for drawing out target cancer cells from undiluted blood. In the next step, they investigated new chip designs to increase the throughput of the blood cell separation to scale up the volumetric sample flow toward 10 mL within one hour while maintaining a low-enough flow velocity to enable good image quality. In the final steps, the researchers evaluated the chip design for identification of rare cells in undiluted healthy donor blood.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project managed to successfully demonstrate a proof of concept that fluorescence imaging of rare cells in whole blood is feasible using the proposed mechanism of expelling rare labelled cells by acoustic cell self-organisation. It was concluded, however, that the current design needs to be improved to enable robust performance.