LEUKOCARE provides key technologies for tumour diagnosis in personalized medicine research project

06-07-2012: LEUKOCARE AG announced that it will receive funding from the EU FP7 grant programme to participate in a four-year international research project aimed at developing a new blood apheresis device for in vivo trapping of circulating tumour cells.

The consortium of eleven companies, universities, and research institutes is coordinated by Leon Terstappen, Professor of Medical Cell Biophysics at the University of Twente (MIRA Institute, Netherlands) and a key opinion leader in the field of circulating tumour cells (CTCs). These cells that have detached from a primary tumour and circulate in the bloodstream play a crucial role in spreading tumour tissue around a patient’s body. Currently only small numbers of CTCs can be isolated from blood sample volumes of 7.5 mL for genetic and immune phenotyping to assess the sensitivity of tumour cells towards certain therapeutics. To increase the number of CTCs, LEUKOCARE intends to develop an extracorporeal blood apheresis column to filter the patient’s whole blood stream. This in vivo trapping will increase the sensitivity of cell counting by about 500-fold. Since the filtered blood is returned into the bloodstream, LEUKOCARE’s expertise on coupling and stabilizing biomolecules on medical device surfaces is needed to ensure high quality and sterility of the new device. The harvested cells will be further characterized by other partners of the consortium.

The development project totals €9 M of which €6 M is provided by the EU grant. LEUKOCARE will receive a €810,000 contribution from the grant over a period of two years to fund its developmental research. The project is expected to return a next-generation device in about 4 years’ time.