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Updated: May 14, 2026

Rapid Isolation of Viable Circulating Tumor Cells from Patient Blood Samples
Published on: June 15, 2012
Isolation of rare cancer cells from blood cells using dielectrophoresis
Alireza Salmanzadeh1, Michael B Sano, Hadi Shafiee
1Engineering Science and Mechanics Department, Virginia Tech and with the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Abstract:
In this study, we investigate the application of contactless dielectrophoresis (cDEP) for isolating cancer cells from blood cells. Devices with throughput of 0.2 mL/hr (equivalent to sorting 3×10(6) cells per minute) were used to trap breast cancer cells while allowing blood cells through. We have shown that this technique is able to isolate cancer cells in concentration as low as 1 cancer cell per 10(6) hematologic cells (equivalent to 1000 cancer cells in 1 mL of blood). We achieved 96% trapping of the cancer cells at 600 kHz and 300 V(RMS).

