Huang Liang, Bian Shengtai, Cheng Yinuo, Shi Guanya, Liu Peng, Ye Xiongying, Wang Wenhui
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instrument, Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University , Beijing, China.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University , Beijing, China.
Biomicrofluidics. 2017 Feb 6;11(1):011501. doi: 10.1063/1.4975666. eCollection 2017 Jan.
Single cell analysis has received increasing attention recently in both academia and clinics, and there is an urgent need for effective upstream cell sample preparation. Two extremely challenging tasks in cell sample preparation-high-efficiency cell enrichment and precise single cell capture-have now entered into an era full of exciting technological advances, which are mostly enabled by microfluidics. In this review, we summarize the category of technologies that provide new solutions and creative insights into the two tasks of cell manipulation, with a focus on the latest development in the recent five years by highlighting the representative works. By doing so, we aim both to outline the framework and to showcase example applications of each task. In most cases for cell enrichment, we take circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as the target cells because of their research and clinical importance in cancer. For single cell capture, we review related technologies for many kinds of target cells because the technologies are supposed to be more universal to all cells rather than CTCs. Most of the mentioned technologies can be used for both cell enrichment and precise single cell capture. Each technology has its own advantages and specific challenges, which provide opportunities for researchers in their own area. Overall, these technologies have shown great promise and now evolve into real clinical applications.
单细胞分析近来在学术界和临床领域都受到了越来越多的关注，并且迫切需要有效的上游细胞样本制备方法。细胞样本制备中的两项极具挑战性的任务——高效细胞富集和精确单细胞捕获——现已进入一个充满令人兴奋的技术进步的时代，这些进步大多由微流体技术推动。在这篇综述中，我们总结了为细胞操作的这两项任务提供新解决方案和创造性见解的技术类别，重点介绍近五年的最新进展，并突出代表性作品。通过这样做，我们旨在勾勒出每项任务的框架并展示示例应用。在大多数细胞富集的情况下，我们将循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）作为目标细胞，因为它们在癌症研究和临床方面具有重要意义。对于单细胞捕获，我们综述了针对多种目标细胞的相关技术，因为这些技术应该对所有细胞更具通用性，而不仅仅适用于CTC。文中提到的大多数技术可用于细胞富集和精确单细胞捕获。每种技术都有其自身的优势和特定挑战，这为各自领域的研究人员提供了机会。总体而言，这些技术已展现出巨大潜力，并且正在发展成为实际的临床应用。
