MIRACLE is a collaborative project between 14 partners from universities, research institutions and companies from all over Europe. The term MIRACLE is an acronym of the projects title "Magnetic Isolation and moleculaR Analysis of single CircuLating and disseminated tumour cElls on chip".

The project is funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme and has started on September 1st, 2010.

Within this project, we aim to develop a small technical lab-on-a-chip device that isolates and analyses circulating tumour cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood and disseminated tumour cells (DTCs) from bone marrow.

CTCs and DTCs are cells that are released by a tumour and eventually become dangerous to the body by generating metastases.

Knowing how many CTCs are present in peripheral blood and DTCs in bone marrow as well as analyzing their genetic background may help in the treatment of cancer patients.