Highly Efficient Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells Using Nanostructured Silicon Substrates with Integrated Chaotic Micromixers

By Shutao Wang, Kan Liu, Jian Liu, Z. T. Yu, Xiaowen Xu, Libo Zhao, Tom T. Lee, E. Lee, J. Reiss, Yi-Kuen Lee and 7 more. Angewandte Chemie, 2011

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Metastases are the most common cause of cancer-related death in patients with solid tumors.[1–4] A considerable body of evidence indicates that tumor cells are shed from a primary tumor mass at the earliest stages of malignant progression[5–7]. These ‘break-away’ circulating tumor cells (CTCs)[8–11] enter the blood stream and travel to different tissues of the body, as a critical route for cancer metastasis. The current gold standard for determining tumor status requires invasive biopsy and subsequent genetic and proteomic analysis of biopsy samples. Alternatively, CTC measurement and analysis can be regarded as a “liquid biopsy” of the tumor, providing insight into tumor biology in the critical window where intervention could actually make a difference. However, detection and characterization of CTCs has been technically challenging due to their extremely low number in the bloodstream. CTCs are often found in the blood of patients with metastatic cancer (only up to hundreds of cells/mL) whereas common blood cells exist in high numbers (>109 cells/mL). Over the past decade, a diverse suite of technologies[8, 12–17] have been evolving to meet the challenge of counting and isolating CTCs from patient blood samples. Many employ different enrichment mechanisms such as immunomagnetic separation based on capture agent-labeled magnetic beads,[8, 16] microfluidics-based technologies[12, 14, 17] that enhance cell-surface contacts, and microfilter devices[13] that isolate CTCs based on size difference. The sensitivity of these emerging technologies, which is critical to their clinical utility for detecting early cancer progression (e.g., tumor invasion of vascular systems), relies on the degree of enrichment of CTCs.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Oncology

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