The detection of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood of cancer patients has the potential to be a powerful and noninvasive method for examining metastasis, evaluating prognosis, assessing tumor sensitivity to drugs, and monitoring therapeutic outcomes. In this study, we have developed an efficient strategy to isolate CTCs from the blood of breast cancer patients using a microfluidic immune-affinity approach. Additionally, to gain further access to these rare cells for downstream characterization, our strategy allows for easy detachment of the captured CTCs from the substrate without compromising cell viability or the ability to employ next generation RNA sequencing for the identification of specific breast cancer genes. To achieve this, a chemical ligand-exchange reaction was engineered to release cells attached to a gold nanoparticle coating bound to the surface of a herringbone microfluidic chip (NP-HBCTC-Chip). Compared to the use of the unmodified HBCTC-Chip, our approach provides several advantages, including enhanced capture efficiency and recovery of isolated CTCs.

The inability to preserve vascular organs beyond several hours contributes to the scarcity of organs for transplantation 1,2. Standard hypothermic preservation at +4°C 1,3 limits liver preservation to less than 12 hours. Our group previously showed that supercooled ice free storage at −6°C can extend viable preservation of rat livers 4,5 However, scaling supercooling preservation to human organs is intrinsically limited because of volume-dependent stochastic ice formation. Here, we describe an improved supercooling protocol that averts freezing of human livers by minimizing favourable sites of ice nucleation and homogeneous preconditioning with protective agents during machine perfusion. We show that human livers can be stored at −4°C with supercooling followed by subnormothermic machine perfusion, effectively extending the ex vivo life of the organ by 27 hours. We show that viability of livers before and after supercooling is unchanged, and that after supercooling livers can withstand the stress of simulated transplantation by ex vivo normothermic reperfusion with blood. The absence of technology to preserve organs for more than a few hours is one of the fundamental causes of the donor organ shortage crisis 1-3. Subzero preservation has the potential to extend the organ storage limits 1-5 , as the metabolic rate halves for every 10°C Users may view, print, copy, and download text and data-mine the content in such documents, for the purposes of academic research, subject always to the full Conditions of use: