Capture and Release of Cancer Cells by Combining On-Chip Purification and Off-Chip Enzymatic Treatment.
As "liquid biopsies", circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been thought to hold significant insights for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Despite the advances of microfluidic techniques that improve the capture of CTCs to a certain extent, recovering the captured CTCs with enhanced purity at the same time remains a challenge. Here, by combining on-chip purification and off-chip enzymatic treatment, we demonstrate a two-stage strategy to enhance the purity of captured cancer cells from blood samples. The on-chip purification introduces a stirring flow to increase the capture sensitivity and decrease nonspecifically bounded cells. The off-chip enzymatic treatment enables the cancer cells to be released from the attached magnetic beads, further improving the purity and enabling next reculture. For the proof-of-concept study, spiked cancer cells are successfully obtained from unprocessed whole blood with high recovery rate (∼68%) and purity (∼61%), facilitating subsequent RNA expression analysis.
Xiaolei
X
Yu
College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University , Wuhan 430070, PR China.
Bingrui
B
Wang
Advanced Micro-nano Textile Innovation Research Center, Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Key Technologies in Textiles, Wuhan Textile University , Wuhan 430073, PR China.
Nangang
N
Zhang
Changqing
C
Yin
Hao
H
Chen
Lingling
L
Zhang
Bo
B
Cai
Zhaobo
Z
He
Lang
L
Rao
Wei
W
Liu
Fu-Bing
FB
Wang
Shi-Shang
SS
Guo
Xing-Zhong
XZ
Zhao
D000818:Animals; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide / Q000737:chemistry; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000201:enzymology / Q000473:pathology*; D002417:Cattle; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D002469:Cell Separation / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes / Q000737:chemistry; D004798:Enzymes / Q000737:chemistry*; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000201:enzymology / Q000473:pathology*; D008280:Magnetics; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000379:methods; D044085:Microfluidics; D009360:Neoplastic Cells, Circulating / Q000378:metabolism*; D040081:Protein Array Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide; D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; D004798:Enzymes; C013830:baysilon
aptamers; circulating tumor cells; hepatocellular carcinoma; microfluidics; release