Utilizing Magnetic Microraft Technology for Single-Cell Isolation of CTCs from Whole Blood for scRNA-Seq Transcriptomic Characterization.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are emerging biomarkers for cancer prognosis, yet existing methods to isolate CTCs from liquid biopsies rely on cell surface markers, which restrict the heterogeneity of the sampled cells. Here, we describe a method for the detection of disease-specific CTCs from peripheral blood using both positive and negative enrichment strategies. We also implement the newly designed Smart-seq3 library preparation protocol, allowing for the sequencing of full-length CTC transcripts at the single-cell level. We demonstrate the utility of this isolation method by isolating melanoma cells spiked into healthy blood, followed by single-cell RNA-seq.