Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, 3074 H.H. Dow, 2300 Hayward Street Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
Biointerfaces Institute (BI), University of Michigan, North Campus Research Complex 2800 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
Small. 2016 Sep;12(33):4450-63. doi: 10.1002/smll.201601394. Epub 2016 Jul 20.
The study of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has been made possible by many technological advances in their isolation. Their isolation has seen many fronts, but each technology brings forth a new set of challenges to overcome. Microfluidics has been a key player in the capture of CTCs and their downstream analysis, with the aim of shedding light into their clinical application in cancer and metastasis. Researchers have taken diverging paths to isolate such cells from blood, ranging from affinity-based isolation targeting surface antigens expressed on CTCs, to label-free isolation taking advantage of the size differences between CTCs and other blood cells. For both major groups, many microfluidic technologies have reported high sensitivity and specificity for capturing CTCs. However, the question remains as to the superiority among these two isolation techniques, specifically to identify different CTC populations. This review highlights the key aspects of affinity and label-free microfluidic CTC technologies, and discusses which of these two would be the highest benefactor for the study of CTCs.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）的研究得益于其分离技术的许多进步。它们的分离已经涉及到许多方面，但每种技术都带来了一系列新的挑战需要克服。微流控技术在 CTC 的捕获及其下游分析中发挥了关键作用，旨在为癌症和转移中的临床应用提供启示。研究人员从血液中分离这些细胞的方法各不相同，从针对 CTC 表面抗原的基于亲和力的分离到利用 CTC 和其他血细胞之间的大小差异的无标记分离。对于这两个主要群体，许多微流控技术已经报道了对 CTC 捕获的高灵敏度和特异性。然而，问题仍然是这两种分离技术之间的优越性，特别是为了识别不同的 CTC 群体。这篇综述强调了基于亲和力和无标记微流控 CTC 技术的关键方面，并讨论了这两种技术中哪一种对 CTC 的研究最有益。
