Dissecting phenotypic transitions in metastatic disease via photoconversion-based isolation.

Cancer patients often harbor occult metastases, a potential source of relapse that is targetable only through systemic therapy. Studies of this occult fraction have been limited by a lack of tools with which to isolate discrete cells on spatial grounds. We developed PIC-IT, a photoconversion-based isolation technique allowing efficient recovery of cell clusters of any size - including single-metastatic cells - which are largely inaccessible otherwise.