Microchips for detection of exfoliated tumor cells in urine for identification of bladder cancer

Bladder cancer (BC) is a common malignancy, and it accounts for one of the highest management costs among urogenital cancers. As a non-invasive method, urine cytology plays an important role in the detection of exfoliated tumor cells (ETCs) for early diagnosis of BC. However, urine cytology suffers from its low sensitivity and reliance on microscopic examination. To address this issue, an integrated filtration device was developed with a pore size of 5 μm that isolated and enriched ETCs from discarded urine samples, and then quantified ETCs using a microchip ELISA method. The results revealed that the number of urinary ETCs from BC patients (n = 35) was obviously higher than the number of ETCs from healthy donors (n = 20). The ROC curve showed that the integrated filtration microfluidic device had a sensitivity of 77.1% when the specificity was set at 90% in identifying BC patients. Thus, the integrated filtration device holds great potential for the screening of BC or the follow-up analysis of treatment efficacy in point-of-care (POC) settings.