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US 2011/0256155 A1Published application
Methods to molecularly characterize circulating tumor cells
AssigneeMedImmune, LLC
InventorsJiaqi Huang, Haifeng Bao, Philip Brohawn, Patricia Burke, Xiaoru Chen, Theresa Lavallee, Yihong Yao
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Abstract
The invention relates to a rapid, sensitive method to obtain a gene expression profile from a target cell population in a blood sample. The target cells can be circulating tumor cells. Disclosed are methods and kits for obtaining such profiles.
Claims22
A rapid, sensitive method to obtain a gene expression profile from a target cell population in a blood sample, the method comprising:
- (a) enriching the blood sample in target cells to obtain an enriched target cell sample;
- (b) treating the enriched sample with a protease;
- (c) extracting and purifying RNA from the sample;
- (d) reverse transcribing the purified RNA to obtain a plurality of cDNAs;
- and
- (e) analyzing the cDNAs with an amplification technique to obtain a target cell gene expression profile comprising expression levels of a plurality of mRNAs of interest,
- wherein the target cell population represents less than 10% of the total cells in the blood sample.
4 more elements
20-21. (canceled)
A kit comprising:
- an antibody or functional fragment thereof specific for a cell surface marker found on target cells, and
- primers adapted to amplify at least one cDNA, wherein the at least one cDNA comprises at least one cDNA not normally expressed in leukocytes.
23-25. (canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.