Geometrically enhanced sensor surfaces for the selective capture of cell-like particles in a laminar flow field

Medical wires inserted into the blood stream of patients offer an attractive perspective to capture rare cells such as circulating tumor cells in vivo. A major challenge in such systems is to achieve an efficient interaction of the desired cells with the sensing surface and avoid those cells that simply flow by the wire without any contact while floating in a laminar flow field at some small distance to the sensor surface. We describe a new strategy to increase the interaction of cells or cell-like particles to such wire-shaped sensor surfaces both from an experimental and a theoretical point of view. For model experiments, we use cell-like particles that are flowing past the profile wire in a blood-like liquid stream. In the fluid dynamics simulations, this sensor is inserted into small capillaries. The influence of geometry and orientation of the wire with respect to the surrounding capillary onto the capture behavior is studied. Parameters, such as wire diameter, profile shape, wire torsion, and orientation of it with respect to the liquid stream, induce in some cases quite strong crossflows. These crossflows enhance the contact probability compared to a straight line wire of the same length by factors of up to about 80. A general model connecting the wire geometry with the crossflow intensity and the particle capture behavior is developed. Particle capture experiments demonstrate that the identified geometric factors can improve the capture of cell-like particles in laminar fluid flows and enhance the performance of such cell sensors.