Noninvasive Optical Isolation and Identification of Circulating Tumor Cells Engineered by Fluorescent Microspheres.
Bei ChenJingjing ZhengKefan GaoXuejia HuShi-Shang GuoXing-Zhong ZhaoFei LiaoYi YangWei LiuPublished in: ACS applied bio materials (2022)
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare, meaning that current isolation strategies can hardly satisfy efficiency and cell biocompatibility requirements, which hinders clinical applications. In addition, the selected cells require immunofluorescence identification, which is a time-consuming and expensive process. Here, we developed a method to simultaneously separate and identify CTCs by the integration of optical force and fluorescent microspheres. Our method achieved high-purity separation of CTCs without damage through light manipulation and avoided additional immunofluorescence staining procedures, thus achieving rapid identification of sorted cells. White blood cells (WBCs) and CTCs are similar in size and density, which creates difficulties in distinguishing them optically. Therefore, fluorescent PS microspheres with high refractive index (RI) are designed here to capture the CTCs (PS-CTCs) and increase the average index of refraction of PS-CTCs. In optofluidic chips, PS-CTCs were propelled to the collection channel from the sample mixture, under the radiation of light force. Cells from the collection outlet were easily identified under a fluorescence microscope due to the fluorescence signals of PS microspheres. This method provides an approach for the sorting and identification of CTCs, which holds great potential for clinical applications in early diagnosis of disease.
Keyphrases
- circulating tumor cells
- induced apoptosis
- circulating tumor
- cell cycle arrest
- single molecule
- quantum dots
- living cells
- oxidative stress
- molecularly imprinted
- signaling pathway
- bioinformatics analysis
- cell death
- mass spectrometry
- radiation therapy
- bone marrow
- mesenchymal stem cells
- pi k akt
- palliative care
- sensitive detection
- high speed
- fluorescent probe
- cell free
- solid phase extraction