Abstract

The research of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has drawn much attention in recent years. It is because of the potential values of CTCs in early diagnosis of cancer, management of clinical treatment, exploration of metastatic mechanism, and development of personalized medicine. However, isolating CTCs has been technically challenging due to their rare numbers in blood. Recently, a variety of microfluidic devices have been developed for CTC isolation, and these devices can realize high capture efficiency and high purity. While enumeration of CTCs has been achieved, further cellular and DNA analysis on the captured CTCs are less reported. In this article, we review recent reports in microfluidic methods for isolation of CTCs and subsequent cellular analysis on them.

Keywords: Circulating tumor cell, microfluidics, immunoaffinity, immunomagnetic, dielectrophoresis, size-based separation.