Advances and critical concerns with the microfluidic enrichments of circulating tumor cells

Over the past two decades, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been widely recognized for their importance in clinical trials. While most enrichment methods for these cells have been conducted through the batch process due to their rarity in blood and the need for large sample volumes, the batch pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLab on a chip Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 45 - 56
Main Authors Hyun, Kyung-A, Jung, Hyo-Il
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England 07.01.2014
Subjects
Antibodies - chemistry
Antibodies - immunology
Antineoplastic Agents - therapeutic use
Biomarkers, Tumor - blood
Biomarkers, Tumor - metabolism
Cell Adhesion Molecules - immunology
Cell Adhesion Molecules - metabolism
Cell Separation - instrumentation
Cell Separation - methods
Humans
Immunomagnetic Separation - methods
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - instrumentation
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - methods
Neoplasms - diagnosis
Neoplasms - drug therapy
Neoplastic Cells, Circulating - metabolism
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Summary:Over the past two decades, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been widely recognized for their importance in clinical trials. While most enrichment methods for these cells have been conducted through the batch process due to their rarity in blood and the need for large sample volumes, the batch process leads to unavoidable cell loss. Given the heterogenetic features of CTCs, this cell loss may limit the validity of research that relies on the isolation of CTCs; such research includes cancer prognosis, diagnosis of minimal residual diseases, assessment of tumor sensitivity to anticancer drugs, and the personalization of anticancer therapies. Recent advances in microfluidic approaches have made it possible to enrich CTCs with a small degree of cell loss. In this review, we highlight several microfluidic-based positive and negative enrichment methods that are the subject of considerable research interest ( e.g. EpCAM-dependent assay and EpCAM-independent assay) and suggest a microfluidic-based single cell analysis platform for the down-stream analysis of CTCs. We also discuss critical concerns and future directions for research. Over the past two decades, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been widely recognized for their importance in clinical trials.
Bibliography:Kyung-A Hyun is a graduate student in the unified masters and doctoral degrees course at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, South Korea. She received her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2011 from Gachon University of Medicine and Science. Her current research area is the separation and characterization of circulating rare cells (CRCs) from blood using microfluidic technology.
Hyo-Il Jung is a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, South Korea, where he leads the Laboratory of Biochip Technology. He obtained BSc and MSc degrees (Biotechnology) from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1993 and 1995, respectively, and received a PhD degree (Physical Biochemistry) from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 2001. His current research interests centre on developing microfluidic devices to solve the major technical problems in biomedical sciences.
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ISSN:1473-0197
1473-0189
1473-0189
DOI:10.1039/c3lc50582k