Creating a capture zone in microfluidic flow greatly enhances the throughput and efficiency of cancer detection

Mingrui Sun; Jiangsheng Xu; James G Shamul; Xiongbin Lu; Syed Husain; Xiaoming He

doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2019.01.014

Creating a capture zone in microfluidic flow greatly enhances the throughput and efficiency of cancer detection

Biomaterials. 2019 Mar:197:161-170. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2019.01.014. Epub 2019 Jan 8.

Authors

Mingrui Sun¹, Jiangsheng Xu², James G Shamul³, Xiongbin Lu⁴, Syed Husain⁵, Xiaoming He⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
³ Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
⁴ Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA.
⁵ Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Department of Surgery, The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
⁶ Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. Electronic address: shawnhe@umd.edu.

Abstract

Efficient capture of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples is valuable for early cancer detection to improve the management of cancer. In this work, we developed a highly efficient microfluidics-based method for detecting CTCs in human blood. This is achieved by creating separate capture and flow zones in the microfluidic device (ZonesChip) and using patterned dielectrophoretic force to direct cells from the flow zone into the capture zone. This separation of the capture and flow zones minimizes the negative impact of high flow speed (and thus high throughput) and force in the flow zone on the capture efficiency, overcoming a major bottleneck of contemporary microfluidic approaches using overlapping flow and capture zones for CTC detection. When the flow speed is high (≥0.58 mm/s) in the flow zone, the separation of capture and flow zones in our ZonesChip could improve the capture efficiency from ∼0% (for conventional device without separating the two zones) to ∼100%. Our ZonesChip shows great promise as an effective platform for the detection of CTCs in blood from patients with early/localized-stage colorectal tumors.

Keywords: CTCs; Capture zone; Detection; Dielectrophesis; Flow zone; Microfluidics.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Cell Line, Tumor
Cell Separation / instrumentation*
Colorectal Neoplasms / blood
Colorectal Neoplasms / diagnosis
Early Detection of Cancer / instrumentation
Equipment Design
Humans
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / instrumentation*
Neoplasms / blood
Neoplasms / diagnosis*
Neoplastic Cells, Circulating / pathology*

Grants and funding

R01 CA206366/CA/NCI NIH HHS/United States