title: Deterministic separation of cancer cells from blood at 10 mL/min.
abstract: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating clusters of cancer and stromal cells have been identified in the blood of patients with malignant cancer and can be used as a diagnostic for disease severity, assess the efficacy of different treatment strategies and possibly determine the eventual location of metastatic invasions for possible treatment. There is thus a critical need to isolate, propagate and characterize viable CTCs and clusters of cancer cells with their associated stroma cells. Here, we present a microfluidic device for mL/min flow rate, continuous-flow capture of viable CTCs from blood using deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) arrays. We show here that a DLD array device can isolate CTCs from blood with capture efficiency greater than 85% CTCs at volumetric flow rates of up to 10 mL/min with no effect on cell viability.
authors.affiliation: Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM), Princeton Universtiy, Princeton, NJ, USA ; Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Loutherback
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: D'Silva
authors.forename: Liyu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Robert H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Austin
authors.forename: James C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Sturm