Evaluation of Microfluidic Ceiling Designs for the Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells on a Microarray Platform

Abstract

The capture of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is still a challenging application for microfluidic chips, as these cells are rare and hidden in a huge background of blood cells. Here, different microfluidic ceiling designs in regard to their capture efficiency for CTCs in model experiments and more realistic conditions of blood samples spiked with a clinically relevant amount of tumor cells are evaluated. An optimized design for the capture platform that allows highly efficient recovery of CTCs from size‐based pre‐enriched samples under realistic conditions is obtained. Furthermore, the viability of captured tumor cells as well as single cell recovery for downstream genomic analysis is demonstrated. Additionally, the authors' findings underline the importance of evaluating rational design rules for microfluidic devices based on theoretical models by application‐specific experiments.

Controlled Surface Adhesion of Macrophages via Patterned Antifouling Polymer Brushes

“…The resulting arrays show good specificity for macrophage capture based on specific antibody interaction and offer additional control for false positives (in the form of unspecifically adhering cells) by checking co-location of array features with adhering macrophages. Such arrays could be upscaled for high-throughput production by additional printing methods as μCS with parallel tips [64] or PPL [56,65] with adjusted custom stamps of appropriate feature size, and be incorporated into microfluidics for future application in biomedical experiments and clinical diagnostics. [65][66][67] Overall, the approach opens up the route for easy and efficient macrophage capture and future sorting applications in research and medical practice.…”

“…Such arrays could be upscaled for high‐throughput production by additional printing methods as μCS with parallel tips [ 64 ] or PPL [ 56,65 ] with adjusted custom stamps of appropriate feature size, and be incorporated into microfluidics for future application in biomedical experiments and clinical diagnostics. [ 65–67 ] Overall, the approach opens up the route for easy and efficient macrophage capture and future sorting applications in research and medical practice.…”

A novel device to capture circulating tumor cells: Quantification and molecular analysis in lung cancer patients

“…15 Although the microfluidic approach requires special reagents, 24 this approach enabled genomic analysis of captured cells. 29,30 Current CTC-based separation is usually based on a single 5–7.5 mL blood volume collection. For patients with low CTC content, separation techniques using a single blood collection cannot obtain a sufficient number of CTCs for subsequent molecular biological analysis.…”

Dip-Pen Nanolithography(DPN): from Micro/Nano-patterns to Biosensing

“…In 2020, Liu et al [93] utilized PPL to print reactive binding sites for detecting CTCs. By exploring the impact of staggered herringbone structure of microfluidic biochip and target cell concentration on the capture efficiency of CTC capture, they got an optimized protocol of CTC capture platform.…”