Rare cells detection

The detection of rarely occurring cells inside a large population of 'normal' cells, i.e. the quantification of residual tumor cells in the blood or the bone marrow of cancer patients, has become an enormously important task in cancer or prenatal diagnostics, tumor staging and therapy monitoring. It requires a detection system of high sensitivity as well as reproducible specificity. Verification of the genetic pattern or expression status of the positive cells is indispensable for the low frequencies of cells (down to 1 cell in 10⁸) that need to be quantitatively assessed.

Automated FISH (A-FISH)

Rare cells detection (RCD) A-FISH includes the hardware and software needed for the automatic detection of rare cells under fluorescent illumination (FISH).  The BV-RCD A-FISH has applications in cancer detection and diagnosis as well as fetal cell detection and analysis. It has the ability to find rare cells in cell suspensions stained with immunohistochemically specific markers like anti-cytokeratin labeled cells for the detection of epithelial cells in Bone marrow or blood samples. It has also the ability to find rare cells labeled with specific FISH markers for the detection of rare cancer cells in Bone marrow or blood or other body fluid in a sensitivity of 5 x 10-6. Using the automated scanning and classification the detection of rare cells is very fast even when using complex probes.

Rare cell (in rectangle) with trisomy 8 (three green FISH signals) and tetrasomy 21 (four red FISH signals) found in follow up of BM sample from the patient with AML.

Rare epithelial cell imunnohystochemically stained for anti-cytokeratin found in peripheral blood sample.

Rare-Cell Detection – Follow-up of MRD patients:

Using the system, MRD can be accurately monitored in hematological diseases by scanning of a large number of cells enabling rapid and efficient identification of rare residual cancer cells, thus increasing sensitivity.

BioView systems enable fast scanning of thousands of cells to detect rare cells that carry chromosomal aberration using simple and complex probes. When scoring thousands of cells, the Duet system correctly identifies the rare signal pattern in each case. The scans are fast and the reproducibility is high. The automated scanning increases sensitivity in detection of rare cells and therefore increases the accuracy in follow-up of MRD patients. 

Field of view with many cells with normal BCR/ABL and one rare cell with  BCR/ABL translocation (in rectangle). Sample labeled with BCR/ABL D-FISH probe.