Circulating Tumor Cell Cluster Sorting by Size and Asymmetry

Sam H Au

doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-3271-0_2

Circulating Tumor Cell Cluster Sorting by Size and Asymmetry

Methods Mol Biol. 2023:2679:15-23. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3271-0_2.

Author

Sam H Au^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, UK. s.au@imperial.ac.uk.
² Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre, London, UK. s.au@imperial.ac.uk.

PMID: 37300606
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3271-0_2

Abstract

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters are rare yet potent initiators of metastasis and may be useful as clinical biomarkers. Numerous techniques have been developed to isolate individual circulating tumor cells from the blood, but these techniques are often ineffective at capturing CTC clusters and may cause cluster damage or dissociation during processing or recovery. This chapter describes methods for fabricating and operating a two-stage continuous microfluidic chip that isolates and recovers viable CTC clusters from blood or biological fluids using deterministic lateral displacement.

Keywords: Aggregates; Circulating tumor cell clusters; Isolation; Microfluidics; Sorting.

MeSH terms

Cell Line, Tumor
Cell Movement
Cell Separation / methods
Humans
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques* / methods
Microfluidics / methods
Neoplastic Cells, Circulating* / pathology