Development of automated single cell manipulation and analysis techniques for rare cell applications

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The proposed research program will develop novel manipulation and analysis techniques for rare single cells. Single cell analysis is an emerging field that is gaining significant interest in life/health sciences since it can facilitate accurate studies of cellular and molecular behaviours of living cells. This will further our knowledge about cell plasticity, heterogeneity, monitoring infections, auto-immunity, drug delivery, stem cell analysis, or cancer cell detection-all at the single cell level. These applications and other advances in life sciences and health research are driving the need to develop new techniques and tools that can rapidly perform more complex and accurate single cell analysis. The immediate goal will be to isolate and characterize rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood at single cell resolution. CTCs are neoplastic cells shed from primary tumors that are found in blood and are believed to seed secondary tumors (i.e. metastasis). Therefore, identifying and characterizing CTCs in blood has the prospect of providing a means of identifying patients who have developed metastatic disease and provide an early detection method. Furthermore, analysis of CTCs for specific cellular and molecular changes has the potential of identifying effective therapies as specific features of tumor cells determine the therapeutic strategy used. Thus, there is much interest in better methods to detect, isolate, and characterize CTCs from blood samples. The research program will first target the CTCs in metastatic prostate cancer. In Canada, an estimated 25,000 men will be diagnosed with the disease every year and 4,000 will die from it. Recent studies suggest CTC count to be a more powerful early predictor of survival than prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The proposed research program will result in the creation of novel robotic-assisted techniques for automated single cell analysis that are tightly linked to and enabling of scientific discoveries in health research. This is a high-risk, high-benefit research that has potential for transformative technological advances in studying and diagnosing diseases and researching novel drug target identification.