School of Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Ave., 11155-9567 Tehran, Iran.
Biosensors (Basel). 2018 Jun 18;8(2):56. doi: 10.3390/bios8020056.
Being the second cause of mortality across the globe, there is now a persistent effort to establish new cancer medication and therapies. Any accomplishment in treating cancers entails the existence of accurate identification systems empowering the early diagnosis. Recent studies indicate CTCs’ potential in cancer prognosis as well as therapy monitoring. The chief shortcoming with CTCs is that they are exceedingly rare cells in their clinically relevant concentration. Here, we simulated a microfluidic construct devised for immunomagnetic separation of the particles of interest from the background cells. This separation unit is integrated with a mixer subunit. The mixer is envisioned for mixing the CTC enriched stream with lysis buffer to extract the biological material of the cell. Some modification was proposed on mixing geometry improving the efficacy of the functional unit. A valuation of engaged forces was made and some forces were neglected due to their order of magnitude. The position of the magnet was also optimized by doing parametric study. For the mixer unit, the effect of applied voltage and frequency on mixing index was studied to find the optimal voltage and frequency which provides better mixing. Above-mentioned studies were done on isolated units and the effect of each functional unit on the other is not studied. As the final step, an integrated microfluidic platform composed of both functional subunits was simulated simultaneously. To ensure the independence of results from the grid, grid studies were also performed. The studies carried out on the construct reveal its potential for diagnostic application.
癌症是全球第二大致死原因，目前人们正在努力开发新的癌症药物和疗法。任何癌症治疗方面的突破都需要有准确的识别系统来实现早期诊断。最近的研究表明，CTC 在癌症预后和治疗监测方面具有潜力。CTC 的主要缺点是它们在临床上相关的浓度下是非常罕见的细胞。在这里，我们模拟了一种微流控结构，用于从背景细胞中免疫磁分离感兴趣的颗粒。该分离单元与混合器单元集成在一起。混合器用于将富含 CTC 的流与裂解缓冲液混合，以提取细胞的生物材料。我们对混合几何形状进行了一些修改，以提高功能单元的效率。对作用的力进行了评估，并由于其数量级而忽略了一些力。还通过进行参数研究优化了磁铁的位置。对于混合器单元，研究了施加的电压和频率对混合指数的影响，以找到提供更好混合的最佳电压和频率。上述研究是在独立单元上进行的，没有研究每个功能单元对另一个单元的影响。作为最后一步，同时模拟了由两个功能单元组成的集成微流控平台。为了确保结果不受网格的影响，还进行了网格研究。对该结构的研究表明其具有诊断应用的潜力。
