A study describes a microfluidic system to concentrate and encapsulate circulating tumor cells, which are cancer cells that can travel through the bloodstream; experiments with circulating prostate cancer cells revealed that the cells displayed high matrix metalloprotease enzyme activity, suggesting that circulating tumor cells may use proteolytic enzymes to facilitate invasion, immune evasion, and metastasis.
Article #18-03884: "Functional profiling of circulating tumor cells with an integrated vortex capture and single-cell protease activity assay," by Manjima Dhar et al.
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences