A Mechanophenotyping chip for high-throughput detection of metastatic bacteria-infected circulating tumor cells

a-mechanophenotyping-chip-for-high-throughput-detection-of-metastatic-bacteria-infected-circulating-tumor-cells
A Mechanophenotyping chip for high-throughput detection of metastatic bacteria-infected circulating tumor cells

Data availability

All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary files. Source data generated in this study are provided in the Supplementary Information/Source Data file. Source data is available for Figs. 2–8 and Supplementary Figs. 1, 418, 2022 in the associated source data file. Any additional requests for information can be directed to, and will be fulfilled by, the corresponding authors. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22477056 to Y. Song, 82472379 to B. He, and 82572370 to Y. Gao), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFA0709200 to Y. Song), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2024300315 to Y. Song), Jiangsu Provincial Medical Key Discipline Cultivation Unit (JSDW202239 to B. He), the Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Program (BE2021373, China to Y. Song), the State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science (5431ZZXM2304 to Y. Song). The graphical abstract in Figs. 1, 2a, g, 4a, 5a, 6a, 7a, 8a, Supplementary Fig. 7a and Supplementary Fig. 22a was created using BioRender. Luo, W. (https://BioRender.com/l1e6nxj). Herein, the authors would like to give sincere thanks to Dr. Shang Cai (Westlake University), who had kindly provided intratumor bacteria as a generous gift.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Wen Luo, Yanfeng Gao.

  2. These authors jointly supervised this work:Tony Y. Hu, Yujun Song.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gastric and Hernia Surgery, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Wen Luo & Yujun Song

  2. School of Medical Imaging, Wannan Medical College, Wuhu, China

    Yanfeng Gao

  3. State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, Department of Pharmaceutics, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China

    Shujun Feng

  4. Department of Laboratory Medicine, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

    Bangshun He & Jingjing Li

  5. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine & Holistic Integrative Medicine, Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Chinese Medicinal Resources Industrialization, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China

    Jingjing Yang

  6. Division of Colorectal Surgery, Department of General Surgery, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

    Yi Yin

  7. Department of Gastric and Hernia Surgery, Nanjing University Medical School Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing, China

    Meng Wang

  8. School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Bin Xue & Yi Cao

  9. School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Tony Y. Hu

Authors

  1. Wen Luo
  2. Yanfeng Gao
  3. Shujun Feng
  4. Bangshun He
  5. Jingjing Li
  6. Jingjing Yang
  7. Yi Yin
  8. Meng Wang
  9. Bin Xue
  10. Yi Cao
  11. Tony Y. Hu
  12. Yujun Song

Contributions

The manuscript was written through contributions of all authors. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript. Y. Song, J. Yang, and T. Hu supervised the project. B.H., J.L., M.W. and Y.Y. provided the clinical blood samples. Y.S. and W.L. conceptualized the research, designed experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript with feedback from all the authors. Y. Gao assisted in the preparation of microfluidic devices. S. Feng assisted in the in vivo assays. B. Xue and Y. Cao assisted in the AFM measurements.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tony Y. Hu or Yujun Song.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Y.S. and W.L. are inventors on a patent application (number of patent application, 202511249032.X) filed by Nanjing University related to this work. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Communications thanks Esmail Pishbin, Chang Liu, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.

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Luo, W., Gao, Y., Feng, S. et al. A Mechanophenotyping chip for high-throughput detection of metastatic bacteria-infected circulating tumor cells. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68152-y

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