(142ak) High Throughput Cell Separation Device for the Enrichment of Circulating Tumor Cells

Isolation and capture of circulating tumor cells (CTC) from the peripheral blood of cancer patients can greatly contribute to the cancer diagnosis, biomarker discovery and the track of therapeutics. Various antibody-based techniques have been developed to isolate, capture, and enumerate CTCs. However, the main disadvantage of antibody-based capture is the difficulty in retrieving live cells for downstream analysis, presumed tumor marker expression and their levels. Moreover, the time-consuming process, including biochemical functionalization, preparation and sample processing, as well as the low throughput hinder its utilization in clinic. Here we present a high throughput cell separation device for the enrichment of CTCs. By utilizing the balance between various hydrodynamic forces, this label-free process is promising for the separation of CTCs based on the size difference of CTCs and other blood cells. This microfluidic device contains complex PDMS channel, allowing cells to be efficiently separated at high throughput while ensuring great recovery and purity of CTCs.