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Studies regarding circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have great significance for cancer prognosis, treatment monitoring, and metastasis diagnosis. However, due to their extremely low concentration in peripheral blood, isolation and enrichment of CTCs are the key steps for early detection. To this end, targeting the folic acid receptors (FRs) on the CTC surface for capture with folic acid (FA) using bovine serum albumin (BSA)-tether for multibiotin enhancement in combination with streptavidin-coated magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs-SA) was developed for ovarian cancer CTC isolation. The streptavidin–biotin-system-mediated two-step binding strategy was shown to capture CTCs from whole blood efficiently without the need for a pretreatment process. The optimized parameters for this system exhibited an average capture efficiency of 80%, which was 25% higher than that of FA-decorated magnetic nanoparticles based on the one-step CTC separation method. Moreover, the isolated cells remained highly viable and were cultured directly without detachment from the MNPs-SA–biotin–CTC complex. Furthermore, when the system was applied for the isolation and detection of CTCs in ovarian cancer patients’ peripheral blood samples, it exhibited an 80% correlation with clinical diagnostic criteria. The results indicated that FA targeting, in combination with BSA-based multibiotin enhancement magnetic nanoparticle separation, is a promising tool for CTC enrichment and detection of early-stage ovarian cancer.

Because of the lack of early screening strategies, ovarian cancer is the most deadly cause of gynecologic malignancies. This paper describes an effective method for the separation and detection of ovarian cancer cells from female whole blood, using folic acid (FA) conjugated magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (IO–FA nanoparticles). The IO nanoparticles were synthesized by thermal decomposition and then covalently conjugated with FA. The IO–FA nanoparticles were stably attached to the surface of ovarian cancer cells by coupling to the over-expressed folate receptor (FR), thereby making the cells magnetic. These “magnetic cells” were separated from the complex blood matrix without destruction under a magnetic field. The separation efficiency was as high as 61.3% when the abundance of spiked ovarian cancer SKOV3 cells was as low as 5 × 10−5%. We also successfully detected five (5) out of ten (10) metastatic ovarian cancer patients’ whole blood. This study suggested the feasibility of early detecting of metastatic ovarian cancer cells, which may potentially improve the ovarian cancers patients’ overall survival rate for clinical applications.