fig1

Figure 1. An injected peptide disruption of blood circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is depicted in the flow diagram. The primary mass of malignant tumors are known to shed cells which can migrate through the intercellular spaces en route to metastasis. The detached migratory tumor cells can extravasate through the blood vessel basement membrane and endothelial cell lining into the lumen of blood vessels (BV). Early CTCs soon form micro-metastatic clusters which further aggregate to form macro-metastatic islets (right side of diagram). CTCs eventually infiltrate into distal target tissues (bone marrow, brain) and “nest” there. However, if designer peptides home toward and bind to tumor cell membrane proteins/receptors as decoy ligands (see text for mRNA expressed proteins), tumor cell clusters could be disrupted and disseminated (left side of diagram). Single circulating cells including CTCs demonstrating cell membrane ruffling and disruption can become susceptible to apoptosis and/or immune surveillance destruction