Fig. 2: Phenotypic and morphological heterogeneity of melanoma CTCs after microfluidic enrichment.
From: Detection and prognostic role of heterogeneous populations of melanoma circulating tumour cells
a Representative CTCs isolated from melanoma patients using Parsortix (Angle plc) or ClearCell FX1 (Biolidics). CTCs were identified through positive immunostaining for MCSP (Alexa Fluor® 647, purple) and intracellular -MEL (gp100, S100 and MLANA; Alexa Fluor® 488, green) markers. DAPI was used for nuclei staining and CD45 (PE, red) as a leucocytic marker. Immunofluorescence intensity of patients CTCs for b the cell surface marker MCSP and c the combination of the melanoma-specific intracellular markers (MEL staining). CTCs recovered with either device are indicated in different colours. The immunofluorescence intensity of A2058 cells spiked into healthy donors’ blood, recovered and detected using the same methods used for patient samples, were included as a reference and labelled as “spike". d Cell size distribution of melanoma CTCs. Merged images of the two largest CTCs observed were included. Graphs are represented as scatter plots with median and interquartiles shown as box and whiskers plots. Scale bars indicate 10 µm.
