Abstract
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating clusters of cancer and stromal cells have been identified in the blood of patients with malignant cancer and can be used as a diagnostic for disease severity, assess the efficacy of different treatment strategies and possibly determine the eventual location of metastatic invasions for possible treatment. There is thus a critical need to isolate, propagate and characterize viable CTCs and clusters. Here, we present a microfluidic device for mL/min flow rate, continuous-flow capture of viable CTCs from blood using deterministic lateral displacement arrays. We show here that a deterministic bump array can be designed such that it will isolate with efficiency greater than 85% CTCs over a large range in sizes from millimeter volume clinical blood samples in minutes, with no effect on cell vitality so that further culturing and analysis of the cells can be carried out.
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Loutherback, K., D'Silva, J., Liu, L. et al. Deterministic Separation of Cancer Cells from Blood at 10 mL/min. Nat Prec (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2012.6861.1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/npre.2012.6861.1
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