Circulating Tumor Cell Cluster Sorting by Size and Asymmetry

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters are rare yet potent initiators of metastasis and may be useful as clinical biomarkers. Numerous techniques have been developed to isolate individual circulating tumor cells from the blood, but these techniques are often ineffective at capturing CTC clusters and may cause cluster damage or dissociation during processing or recovery. This chapter describes methods for fabricating and operating a two-stage continuous microfluidic chip that isolates and recovers viable CTC clusters from blood or biological fluids using deterministic lateral displacement.