Microfluidics and Circulating Tumor Cells

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are shed from cancerous tumors, enter the circulatory system, and migrate to distant organs to form metastases that ultimately lead to the death of most patients with cancer. Identification and characterization of CTCs provides a means to study, monitor, and potentially interfere with the metastatic process. Isolation of CTCs from blood is challenging because CTCs are rare and possess characteristics that reflect the heterogeneity of cancers. Various methods have been developed to enrich CTCs from many millions of normal blood cells. Microfluidics offers an opportunity to create a next generation of superior CTC enrichment devices. This review focuses on various microfluidic approaches that have been applied to date to capture CTCs from the blood of patients with cancer.

Tumour-on-a-chip: microfluidic models of tumour morphology, growth and microenvironment

“…While the amount of CTCs is very low in peripheral blood, it is hypothesized that cancer stem cells or tumour initiating cells can seed in distant tissues and grow into secondary tumours [171]. Many microfluidic platforms have been developed for capture and analysis of CTCs, more dedicated articles can be found in the literature [172][173][174].…”

Circulating Tumor Cell Isolation: A Marathon Race Worth Running

“…The first development of a microfluidic platform (the "CTC-chip"), for the separation of viable CTCs from peripheral blood on the basis of the interaction of target CTCs with EpCAM-coated microposts under precisely controlled laminar flow conditions (13 ), was followed by numerous publications on the isolation of CTCs using microfluidics (14 ). A variety of microfluidics and filtration devices have been developed for the isolation of CTCs on the basis of the different properties of CTCs that distinguish them from the surrounding normal hematopoietic cells: (a) physical properties like size, density, electric charges, or deformability; (b) biological properties such as cell surface protein expression, which involve immunomagnetic bead separation with positive or negative selection; or (c) a combination of both with filtration-based size separation, antigen cell sorting using flow cytometry, and density gradient centrifugation.…”

Optimized Simulation and Validation of Particle Advection in Asymmetric Staggered Herringbone Type Micromixers

“…Cell and particle manipulation is a key issue in the development of Lab-on-a-chip applications (e.g., CTC (circulating tumor cell) separation and counting [29]). Therefore, the quality of model simulations is critical in the effective development of these new devices.…”