PNRR POC - EVOLUTION Development and validation of a biomedical device for the detection, characterization and removal of Circulating Tumor Cells from the peripheral blood of patients for the treatment and diagnosis of cancer

EVOLUTION aims to design, implement and develop a device that is able to treat patients with lung cancer by eliminating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the entire blood volume of a patient, during an extracorporeal circulation procedure, giving rise to a treatment that can be defined as "liquid surgery" of the solid tumor.

This project merges innovative patented technological devices/approaches developed at IRST (CTC-sorting unit) and UniSannio (Raman-based detection and characterization unit) in order to define an device that could represent:

1. a therapeutic option that will be used to treat cancers, in addition to conventional strategies, potentially usable in the adjuvant, neoadjuvant and/or metastatic settings, delaying or preventing metastasis onset and spreading, decreasing relapses and deaths;
2. an unprecedented diagnostic chance to investigate tumor features studying a high number of CTCs, even when the tumor cannot be conventionally detected or sampled.

EVOLUTION will pave the way for the therapeutic use of CTC liquid surgery, establishing a novel area of research in the field of cancer research and management and improving CTC based companion diagnostics.