Figure 2.

Size and Expression Comparison of Cell Lines and Patient CTCs – The size distributions of the CTCs, cell lines - Melanoma (SK-Mel28 – 2500 cells), Lung (H1975 – 5514 cells), Prostate (PC3-9 – 225 cells) and Breast (MB231 – 201 cells, SkBR – 295 cells) and healthy donor white blood cells obtained via running the CTC-iChip without magnetic beads (1 healthy donor sample – 620 cells) categorized by (a) cell population and (b) patient. Cell lines were significantly larger than their corollary CTC populations (All p < 0.001 Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test). The horizontal line at 13.9 µm indicates the size above which there are only 0.1% of WBCs. (c,d) The EpCAM expression distributions of the CTCs, cell lines and white blood cells categorized by cell population (left) and patient (right). Note that melanoma patient samples were excluded from the EpCAM measurements as they are generally accepted to not express EpCAM. Cell lines were significantly different in expression than their corollary CTC populations (All p < 0.001 Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test). The horizontal line at 147 a.u. indicates the estimated CellSearch® threshold for capture. Flow cytometry images from individual patients in four distinct categories emphasizing the heterogeneity of cells even within a single patient are given in Supplementary Figure 9. The patients from which these cells were sampled from are boxed with dashed lines. Size vs EpCAM – A comparative presentation of individual cell expression and size for patient CTCs with WBCs presented as a reference point for all (e) breast cancer, (f) lung cancer and (g) prostate cancer patient CTCs. NOTE: Here the EpCAM expression is the mean expression intensity rather than an absolute number. The two thresholds defined for size (13.9 µm) and EpCAM expression (147 a.u.) are represented by the horizontal and vertical dotted and dashed lines respectively. The quadrants are labeled with the percentage of patient CTCs in each.