title: Separation of tumor cells with dielectrophoresis-based microfluidic chip.
abstract: The present work demonstrates the use of a dielectrophoretic lab-on-a-chip device in effectively separating different cancer cells of epithelial origin for application in circulating tumor cell (CTC) identification. This study uses dielectrophoresis (DEP) to distinguish and separate MCF-7 human breast cancer cells from HCT-116 colorectal cancer cells. The DEP responses for each cell type were measured against AC electrical frequency changes in solutions of varying conductivities. Increasing the conductivity of the suspension directly correlated with an increasing frequency value for the first cross-over (no DEP force) point in the DEP spectra. Differences in the cross-over frequency for each cell type were leveraged to determine a frequency at which the two types of cell could be separated through DEP forces. Under a particular medium conductivity, different types of cells could have different DEP behaviors in a very narrow AC frequency band, demonstrating a high specificity of DEP. Using a microfluidic DEP sorter with optically transparent electrodes, MCF-7 and HCT-116 cells were successfully separated from each other under a 3.2 MHz frequency in a 0.1X PBS solution. Further experiments were conducted to characterize the separation efficiency (enrichment factor) by changing experimental parameters (AC frequency, voltage, and flow rate). This work has shown the high specificity of the described DEP cell sorter for distinguishing cells with similar characteristics for potential diagnostic applications through CTC enrichment.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Mohammed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Alshareef
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Metrakos
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Juarez Perez
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA.
authors.forename: Fadi
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Azer
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: WJB Dorn Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Columbia, South Carolina and Dorn Research Institute, Columbia, South Carolina 29209, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaoming
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA ; Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Guiren
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang