ANGLE plc announced the launch of its Portrait®+ CTC staining kit at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS). The Portrait+ CTC staining kit is a ready-to-use kit for the identification, characterisation and enumeration of epithelial and mesenchymal cancer cells including those undergoing epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT is a key transition step in cancer cells, and is associated with tumour progression, the development of drug resistance, and metastasis.

This launch follows extensive development, optimisation and validation of the kit to provide advanced immunofluorescent (IF) staining of CTCs harvested from a patient blood sample by the Parsortixtechnology. The performance of current CTC protocols being used by academic and research institutions varies considerably. ANGLE has developed its test for reliable repeatable results with a fully validated, standardised protocol to make it easy for customers to adopt.

Key features of the product include: use of a direct staining technique and an optimised, vivid dye combination to ensure high signal intensity while maintaining high analytical specificity and sensitivity. pre-mixed and freeze-dried antibodies for ease-of-use and long-term storage. inclusion of aCellKeep?

slide, a unique CTC harvesting technology developed by ANGLE to maximise the retention of CTCs harvested from blood samples for imaging. The slide confines the harvested CTCs to a small area, reducing the volume of antibodies required for staining, decreasing imaging time and cost and minimising cell loss between the Parsortix system and the imaging process. It is well established that the number of CTCs is not only prognostic to overall survival, but can monitor drug treatment response, detect early development of (micro)metastases and assess therapeutic response earlier than traditional imaging methods.

The Portrait+ CTC staining kit can be used to enumerate CTCs harvested using the epitope independent Parsortixtechnology in multiple cancer types including breast, lung, prostate and ovarian cancers.