Epic's circulating tumor cell (CTC) technology was featured in the April 2014 issue of The Scientist. The article discusses how our no cell left behind™ technology can capture all of the CTCs in a blood sample, because Epic's approach does not rely on cell-enrichment strategies. Our imaging system captures pictures of all the cells on the slide (approximately 3 million), records the precise coordinates of each cell, and analyzes each cell for 90 different parameters—the fluorescence intensity of the four fluorescent markers and 86 different morphological parameters.
Epic can also use FISH and other staining techniques to look for abnormalities such as duplications, deletions, and rearrangements. The imaging and analysis technology also allows for the coordinates of every cell on a slide to be known so that a single cell can be retrieved from the slide for analysis using next-generation sequencing.