An Integrated Microfluidic Platform for Negative Selection and Enrichment of Circulating Tumor Cells

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are indicators for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. In this work, a new integrated microfluidic system capable of un-biased and sensitive “negative” enrichment of CTCs was developed. By using anti-human CD45 coated magnetic beads, leukocytes were removed by external magnetic force, leaving behind an enriched target cell population. The results demonstrated that the developed chip was capable of performing CTC negative enrichment with comparable performance as the conventional benchtop method while offering significant advantages in rapid incubation and potential for automation, suggesting the developed chip is promising for standardized CTC isolation platform.