Fig. 1

Detection of CTCs in HCC. a) Schema of CTC enrichment with microfluidic platform. b) Immunofluorescent staining of CTC with cytokeratin (CK-WS: red) and glypican-3 (GP-3: orange) and leukocytes with CD45 (green). DAPI nuclear counter stain (blue). Bar = 10 μm. c) Representative CT scan (top) and 3D reconstruction (bottom) images of HCC Low vs High tumor volume. d) CTCs/ml in healthy donors (HD) and HCC patients with low and high tumor volume (TV). Bar = median. * p = 0.0454 Mann-Whitney test. e) Tumor volume calculations (cc) vs CTCs/mL by scatter plot showing samples from patients with low (blue) and high (red) tumor volumes. Spearman r = − 0.3043