A Novel Microfluidic Method Utilizing a Hydrofoil Structure to Improve Circulating Tumor Cell Enrichment: Design and...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Oncology
• Microfluidics

Background:

• Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are vital biomarkers in liquid biopsy for cancer management.
• Effective isolation and characterization of CTCs are critical for monitoring cancer evolution and guiding therapy.
• Current CTC isolation methods face challenges in achieving high recovery rates and purity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel microfluidic chip for efficient enrichment of CTCs from whole blood.
• To improve the resolution of CTC separation from peripheral blood cells using a hydrofoil structure.
• To assess the performance of the microfluidic chip in terms of CTC recovery, white blood cell (WBC) depletion, and cell viability.

Main Methods:

• A spiral microfluidic channel with an embedded hydrofoil structure was designed for size-based CTC enrichment.
• Analytical validation was performed using MCF7 breast cancer cells spiked into healthy donor blood samples.
• The system's performance was evaluated in single-step and two-step processing modes.

Main Results:

• A single-step process achieved a high CTC recovery rate of 77.1% with 84.7% cell viability.
• A two-step process decreased recovery to 65.5% but increased WBC depletion to 88.3%, enhancing purity.
• Cell viability remained above 80% after the two-step process.

Conclusions:

• The novel microfluidic chip effectively isolates CTCs with high recovery and viability.
• The device shows promise for applications requiring high-purity CTCs for downstream functional analyses.
• This technology can significantly contribute to advancing liquid biopsy techniques in cancer management.