Microfluidic Approaches for Cancer Cell Separation: Review

Abstract

This article reviews the recent developments in microfluidic technologies for in vitro cancer diagnosis. We summarize the working principles and experimental results of microfluidic platforms for cancer cell detection, and separation based on magnetic activated micro-sorting, and differences in cellular biophysics (e.g., cell size and dielectrophoresis (DEP)).

Influence factors of channel geometry for separation of circulating tumor cells by four‐ring inertial focusing microchannel

“…Figure 4,5 shows that the focus range of the cells was in good agreement with the results observed in Figure 3 as the fluid flow rate increased ($${\rm{R}}$$ represents the rightmost end of the focus position; $${\rm{L}}$$ represents the leftmost end of the focus position; $${\rm{B}}$$ represents the focus center near the bottom of the channel; $${\rm{T}}$$ represents the focus center near the top of the channel) 26 . Among all cells, the blood cells of 8 and 12 μm started to shift from the center of the channel to the outside of the channel as the fluid flow rate increased.…”

“…HeLa cells with a size of 16 μm were separated from the original focus center, and the focus center gradually moved to the Dean vortex center of the outlet 2, resulting in a decrease in the separation effect between blood cells and HeLa cells. This was not ideal in the case of the separation of CTCs and blood cells 22–27 …”

“…The P2 + P2 format was used to increase the fluid discretization and increase the accuracy of the numerical simulation. In addition, the microchannel wall needed to adopt a nonslip boundary, and the outlet pressure was set to 0, such as one atmosphere 26 …”

High spatial and temporal resolution cell manipulation techniques in microchannels

“…Further examples such as for inertial, 17 droplet, 18,19 pneumatic, 20,21 filter-based, 22,23 electroosmotic, 24 immunoaffinity 25 and digital 26 microfluidics, cell traps 27 and optical tweezers, 28 are not covered here, but we recommend corresponding in-depth literature. [29][30][31][32][33][34][35]…”

Hydrodynamic Assists Magnetophoreses Rare Cancer cells Separation in Microchannel Simulation and Experimental Verifications

“…Anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecule antibody (anti-EpCAM antibody), has been commonly used in studies for CTCs identification as U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved Veridex Cellsearch® system (USA), considered as an example in utilizing this approach for clinical uses [16]. As shown in our previously published review paper [17], the different microfluidic methods that have been fabricated to separate cells including CTCs, suffers some limitations. Until now a few work has been done to overcome these limitation, by utilizing a microfluidic platforms that combine and merge two or more technique into one microfluidic platform.…”