Bio-Rad Laboratories,  a global leader in life science research and clinical diagnostics products, today announced the launch of Celselect Slides 2.0 to enhance rare cell and circulating tumor cell (CTC) capture. Compatible with Bio-Rad’s Genesis Cell Isolation System, the latest version of Celselect Slides enables the processing of greater volumes of liquid biopsy samples and offers the ability to capture and recover a greater number of CTCs for enumeration or use in downstream applications.

The Genesis Cell Isolation System provides researchers with unbiased size-based microfluidic cell selection to gently and efficiently capture a wide range of CTCs and other rare cells from liquid biopsy samples such as blood in one benchtop solution. The latest version of Celselect Slides allows researchers to load 2.5x more sample per slide compared to Celselect Slides 1.0, increasing the sample volume from 4 ml to 10 ml. The number of microchambers in which CTCs are captured has also increased, from 56,400 in the version 1.0 slides to 140,800 in the version 2.0 slides. The Genesis System’s two-bay design accepts two Celselect Slides that can be run independently, now permitting a total volume of 20 ml of sample to be processed at one time. Bio-Rad’s new slide design is also compatible with full standard blood tube runs (~8 ml), allowing seamless integration into researchers’ existing workflows.

The increased volume of liquid biopsy sample accepted by the Genesis Cell Isolation System will allow researchers to process a larger amount of sample in a single run, improving the efficiency of CTC capture. This will increase the number of viable CTCs captured for immunofluorescence applications such as enumeration and identification of various CTC types, for downstream analyses such as next-generation sequencing or Droplet Digital™ PCR, or for sub-cultivation.

"CTCs are rare — as low as only 1–10 can be found per milliliter of blood — however, CTC enumeration and analysis offers valuable insight into tumor heterogeneity and disease progression,” said Stephen Kulisch, Vice President of Marketing for Bio-Rad’s Digital Biology Group. “Building on the capabilities of Celselect Slides 1.0, we're continuing to improve the efficiency of rare CTC enrichment, enumeration, and recovery to accelerate cancer research workflows. This launch reflects the expansion of our technological capabilities and our commitment to bringing novel solutions to researchers to improve our understanding of cancer and inform research programs."