Figure 4.

Retrieval of malignant cells from whole blood. SK‐GT‐4, Huh‐7, ML1 and OVCAR 3 cells were added to 4 ml of whole blood to give a final concentration of 500, 50 and 5 malignant cells/ml. The samples were enriched for malignant cells by depletion of blood cells and the residual cells were incubated with fluorescent antibodies and nuclear dye and analysed by high‐resolution flow cytometry as described in the Materials and Method. The mean recoveries (±SEM) across the four tumour types were 57.3 ± 3.6, 49.2 ± 3.9 and 59.0 ± 5.6% from 500, 50 and 5 cells/ml of blood, respectively. Experiments were replicated at least thrice.