Correction: Metabolic pathway for the universal fluorescent recognition of tumor cells.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.18551.].

Adaptive metabolic pattern biomarker for disease monitoring and staging of lung cancer with liquid biopsy.

In this manuscript, we demonstrate the applicability of a metabolic liquid biopsy for the monitoring and staging of patients with lung cancer. This method provides an unbiased detection strategy to establish a more precise correlation between CTC quantification and the actual burden of disease, therefore improving the accuracy of staging based on current imaging techniques. Also, by applying statistical analysis techniques and probabilistic models to the metabolic status and distribution of peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) populations "perturbed" by the presence of CTCs, a new category of adaptive metabolic pattern biomarker (AMPB) is described and unambiguously correlated to the different clinical stages of the patients. In fact, this strategy allows for classification of different categories of disease within a single stage (stage IV) before computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans and with lower uncertainty.

Metabolic pathway for the universal fluorescent recognition of tumor cells.

Quantification of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in blood samples from cancer patients is a non-invasive approach to monitoring the status of the disease. Most of the methods proposed in the recent years are phenomenological and rely on the use of antibodies labelled with fluorophores, magnetic particles, or immobilized on surfaces to capture the CTCs. Herein, we designed and optimized a method that employs a glucose analogue labelled with a fluorophore which takes advantage of the different metabolic pathways of cancer cells to discern them from normal ones. Notably, we demonstrate that fluorescence signal in tumor cells can be greatly maximized by applying hyperoxia conditions without damaging the cells. These results are demonstrated by means of confocal fluorescence and flow-cytometry measurements in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) extracted after Ficoll of human blood samples and spiked with a known concentration of MCF-7 tumor cells.

Optofluidic device for the quantification of circulating tumor cells in breast cancer.

Metastatic cancer patients require a continuous monitoring during the sequential treatment cycles to carefully evaluate their disease evolution. Repetition of biopsies is very invasive and not always feasible. Herein, we design and demonstrate a 3D-flow focusing microfluidic device, where all optics are integrated into the chip, for the fluorescence quantification of CTCs in real samples. To test the chip performance, two cell membrane targets, the epithelial cell adhesion molecule, EpCAM, and the receptor tyrosine-protein kinase, HER2, are selected. The efficiency of the platform is demonstrated on cell lines and in a variety of healthy donors and metastatic-breast cancer patients.