Dept. Bioengineering and Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
Lab Chip. 2012 Nov 7;12(21):4336-43. doi: 10.1039/c2lc40354d.
The circulating tumor cell (CTC) test has recently become popular for evaluating prognosis and treatment efficacy in cancer patients. The accuracy of the test is strongly dependent on the precision of the cancer cell separation. In this study, we developed a multistage microfluidic device to separate cancer cells from a red blood cell (RBC) suspension using inertial migration forces. The device was able to effectively remove RBCs up to the 1% hematocrit (Hct) condition with a throughput of 565 μL min(-1). The collection efficiency of cancer cells from a RBC suspension was about 85%, and the enrichment of cancer cells was about 120-fold. Further improvements can be easily achieved by parallelizing the device. These results illustrate that the separation of cancer cells from RBCs is possible using only inertial migration forces, thus paving the way for the development of a novel microfluidic device for future CTC tests.
循环肿瘤细胞 (CTC) 检测最近在评估癌症患者的预后和治疗效果方面变得流行。该检测的准确性强烈依赖于癌细胞分离的精确性。在这项研究中，我们开发了一种多阶段微流控装置，利用惯性迁移力从红细胞 (RBC) 悬浮液中分离癌细胞。该装置能够在 565 μL min(-1) 的流速下有效地去除高达 1% 血细胞比容 (Hct) 的 RBC，收集效率约为 85%，癌细胞的富集倍数约为 120 倍。通过并行化设备，进一步的改进可以很容易地实现。这些结果表明，仅使用惯性迁移力就可以实现从 RBC 中分离癌细胞，从而为未来 CTC 检测开发新型微流控装置铺平了道路。
