Ooi Chinchun, Earhart Christopher M, Hughes Casey E, Lee Jung-Rok, Wong Dawson J, Wilson Robert J, Rohatgi Rajat, Wang Shan X
Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA; Department of Fluid Dynamics, Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
Adv Mater Technol. 2020 May;5(5). doi: 10.1002/admt.201900960. Epub 2020 Mar 18.
Microfluidic devices are widely used for applications such as cell isolation. Currently, the most common method to improve throughput for microfluidic devices involves fabrication of multiple, identical channels in parallel. However, this 'numbering up' only occurs in one dimension, thereby limiting gains in volumetric throughput. In contrast, macro-fluidic devices permit high volumetric flow-rates but lack the finer control of microfluidics. Here, we demonstrate how a micro-pore array design enables flow homogenization across a magnetic cell capture device, thus creating a massively parallel series of micro-scale flow channels with consistent fluidic and magnetic properties, regardless of spatial location. This design enables scaling in 2-dimensions, allowing flow-rates exceeding 100 mL/hr while maintaining >90% capture efficiencies of spiked lung cancer cells from blood in a simulated circulating tumor cell system. Additionally, this design facilitates modularity in operation, which we demonstrate by combining two different devices in tandem for multiplexed cell separation in a single pass with no additional cell losses from processing.
微流控装置广泛应用于细胞分离等领域。目前，提高微流控装置通量的最常见方法是并行制造多个相同的通道。然而，这种“增加数量”仅在一个维度上发生，从而限制了体积通量的提升。相比之下，宏流控装置允许高体积流速，但缺乏微流控的精细控制。在此，我们展示了微孔阵列设计如何实现跨磁细胞捕获装置的流动均匀化，从而创建一系列大规模并行的微尺度流动通道，这些通道具有一致的流体和磁性特性，而与空间位置无关。这种设计能够在二维上进行扩展，在模拟循环肿瘤细胞系统中，可实现超过100 mL/小时的流速，同时保持对血液中加标的肺癌细胞的捕获效率大于90%。此外，这种设计便于操作的模块化，我们通过串联组合两个不同的装置来证明这一点，以便在单次通过中进行多重细胞分离，且处理过程中不会有额外的细胞损失。
