Single-cell sorting and recovery of pure tumor cell populations to enable molecular sequence analysis of tumor tissue specimens limited by size and or tumor content

e13003Background: Often, the amount of tumor tissue needed for clinical determination of patient’ mutation status exceeds what is actually available. Macrodissected FFPE tumor specimens can be small, difficult to recover and/or remain compromised by low tumor content. Though the less invasive fine needle aspiration (FNA) procedure yields cells with good quality, tumor cell frequency is often also very low. We have previously reported the utility of the DEPArray in overcoming intracellular tumor heterogeneity, which limits downstream analysis. Here, we demonstrate 100% efficiency in recovering pure tumor cell populations from tumor-derived macrodissected FFPE and FNA using the DEPArray platform. Methods: FFPE macrodissected sections and FNA (n = 14) originating from prostate, breast, pancreatic and lung tumors were evaluated. Each was processed using a disassociation and staining procedure followed by DEPArray sorting based on cytokeratin (Ker), vimentin (Vim) and nuclear staining. The recovered cells were...