Nano-magnetic aptamer sensor incorporating AND logic recognition-launched hybridization chain reaction for organ origin identification of circulating tumor cells

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are effective bio-markers for early diagnosis and disease monitoring of cancer, but there is lack of simple and effective strategy to achieve the detection of multiple markers on CTCs while enriching, especially the identification of organ origin, limits their broad clinical applications. Here we present a nano-magnetic aptamer sensor platform to capture broad spectrum of epithelial CTCs and simultaneously identify their multiple organ origins by AND logic recognition-launched hybridization chain reaction. The platform exhibited excellent capture and enrichment capabilities for epithelial CTCs, and showed the ability to precisely identify their organ origin markers (GPC3 for liver and TTF1 for lung), even able to trace metastatic cancer to related organs. The developed nano-magnetic aptamer sensor platform provides a feasible strategy for multi-marker accurate detection of CTCs and a promising auxiliary tool for the precise treatment of cancer.