Issue 8, 2022

Process simplification and structure design of parallelized microslit isolator for physical property-based capture of tumor cells

Abstract

Numerous attempts have been made to develop efficient systems to purify trace amounts of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples. However, current technologies are limited by complexities in device fabrication, system design, and process operability. Here we describe a facile, scalable, and highly efficient approach to physically capturing CTCs using a rationally designed microfluidic isolator with an array of microslit channels. The wide but thin microslit channels with a depth of several micrometers selectively capture CTCs, which are larger and less deformable than other blood cells, while allowing other blood cells to just flow through. We investigated in detail the effects of the microchannel geometry and operating parameters on the capture efficiency and selectivity of several types of cultured tumor cells spiked in blood samples as the CTC model. Additionally, in situ post-capture staining of the captured cells was demonstrated to investigate the system's applicability to clinical cancer diagnosis. The presented approach is simple in operation but significantly effective in capturing specific cells and hence it may have great potential in implementating cell physics-based CTC isolation techniques for cancer liquid biopsy.

Graphical abstract: Process simplification and structure design of parallelized microslit isolator for physical property-based capture of tumor cells

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 Jan 2022
Accepted
09 Mar 2022
First published
10 Mar 2022

Analyst, 2022,147, 1622-1630

Process simplification and structure design of parallelized microslit isolator for physical property-based capture of tumor cells

N. Shimmyo, M. Furuhata, M. Yamada, R. Utoh and M. Seki, Analyst, 2022, 147, 1622 DOI: 10.1039/D2AN00052K

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