Microfluidic-Assisted CTC Isolation and In Situ Monitoring Using Smart Magnetic Microgels.
Amir SeyfooriSeyyed Ali Seyyed EbrahimiMohamadmahdi SamandariEhsan SamieiEvan StefanekCathie GarnisMohsen AkbariPublished in: Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) (2023)
Capturing rare disease-associated biomarkers from body fluids can offer an early-stage diagnosis of different cancers. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are one of the major cancer biomarkers that provide insightful information about the cancer metastasis prognosis and disease progression. The most common clinical solutions for quantifying CTCs rely on the immunomagnetic separation of cells in whole blood. Microfluidic systems that perform magnetic particle separation have reported promising outcomes in this context, however, most of them suffer from limited efficiency due to the low magnetic force generated which is insufficient to trap cells in a defined position within microchannels. In this work, a novel method for making soft micromagnet patterns with optimized geometry and magnetic material is introduced. This technology is integrated into a bilayer microfluidic chip to localize an external magnetic field, consequently enhancing the capture efficiency (CE) of cancer cells labeled with the magnetic nano/hybrid microgels that are developed in the previous work. A combined numerical-experimental strategy is implemented to design the microfluidic device and optimize the capturing efficiency and to maximize the throughput. The proposed design enables high CE and purity of target cells and real-time time on-chip monitoring of their behavior. The strategy introduced in this paper offers a simple and low-cost yet robust opportunity for early-stage diagnosis and monitoring of cancer-associated biomarkers.
Keyphrases
- circulating tumor cells
- early stage
- induced apoptosis
- molecularly imprinted
- circulating tumor
- cell cycle arrest
- high throughput
- low cost
- oxidative stress
- single cell
- computed tomography
- signaling pathway
- healthcare
- radiation therapy
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- squamous cell carcinoma
- type diabetes
- liquid chromatography
- cell proliferation
- insulin resistance
- skeletal muscle
- label free
- health information
- lymph node
- lymph node metastasis