About
Clinical Instructor
Division of Dermatology
UCLA
Project Title: Determination of Single-Cell Heterogeneity of Circulating Tumor Cells in Cancer
Mentors:
Matthew Rettig, MD – UCLA
Dino Di Carlo, PhD – UCLA
David Elashoff, PhD – UCLA
Multidisciplinary Expertise:
Cancer, Metastasis, Circulating Tumor Cells, genomics/transcriptomics, bioengineering
Project Description:
Cancer can pose a significant burden when in advanced stages or recurrent; the Vortex Chip technology that we have developed provides a non-invasive method to collect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and can serve as a source of cells to study tumor cell heterogeneity. Understanding heterogeneity in cancer, particularly at the single cell level, will be important in understanding tumor evolution and in predicting response to treatments and this work aims to examine single cell heterogeneity through capture of CTCs from patients with advanced cancer and to validate its use for determining molecular and genetic information. Such information will allow for improved understanding of cancer and may assist in development of more specifically targeted treatments.