Advances in analytical microfluidic workflows for differential cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Early detection and functional analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in liquid biopsy rather than counting them offer great promise as physicians can improve differential diagnosis for second-or third-line treatment beyond today's genotype information from next-generation sequencing and the limited statistical power of histopathology analysis. Microfluidics holds a great potential for an accurate and reliable isolation and analytical examination of cancer liquid biopsy. This review describes fundamentals and technological breakthroughs of immunolabeled and label-free analytical microfluidic chips (µ-chips), developed to screen and examine CTCs. The impacts of highly-selective biomarkers and their features on the assembly and renovation of high-tech immunolabeled and label-free µ-chips are discussed. Owing to significant impacts of multifunctional nanostructures on the performance of analytical µ-chips based on engineering-driven workflows, this review also focuses on their critical roles for screening CTCs benefited from the nanoscale physicochemical features. The advantages of integrated analytical µ-chips are then identified and examined regarding their dominated sorting technologies. Furthermore, this review explores innovative technologies incorporating downstream cellular-/molecular analysis into integrative analytical µ-chips to pave the way for non-invasive point-of-care diagnostics.

Continuous Perfusion Experiments on 3D Cell Proliferation in Acoustic Levitation

“…For workflow solutions using only minute amounts of patient samples, microfluidic principles can be applied to minimize the dead volume and fully exploit the various opportunities for perfusion experiments for cell-cell interaction studies. Today, microfluidics is used in multiple applications, such as serology/immunology, separation [13,14], centrifugal platform/blood analysis, cell sorting, and organ-on-a-chip [15]. Standard microfluidic methods for manipulating cells include electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis, magnetophoresis, pillar-based separation method, thermophoresis, inertial forces, optical tweezing, and acoustophoresis [16].…”

Design and Application of Microfluidic Capture Device for Physical–Magnetic Isolation of MCF-7 Circulating Tumor Cells

“…Various techniques have been used to capture CTCs, but these can be divided into two major classifications, namely (i) physical and (ii) immunological capture. The physical methods include using the physical properties (such as their larger size, larger mass and different shape) of CTCs to isolate them [ 12 ]. These techniques include hydrodynamic flow focusing, entrapment using micro/nanostructures, dielectrophoresis (DEP) and acoustic isolation [ 13 , 14 , 15 ].…”