A Hybrid Spiral Microfluidic Platform Coupled with Surface Acoustic Waves for Circulating Tumor Cell Sorting and Separation: A Numerical Study.

Rana Altay,Ali Koşar,Murat Kaya Yapici

doi:10.3390/bios12030171

Abstract

The separation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples is crucial for the early diagnosis of cancer. During recent years, hybrid microfluidics platforms, consisting of both passive and active components, have been an emerging means for the label-free enrichment of circulating tumor cells due to their advantages such as multi-target cell processing with high efficiency and high sensitivity. In this study, spiral microchannels with different dimensions were coupled with surface acoustic waves (SAWs). Numerical simulations were conducted at different Reynolds numbers to analyze the performance of hybrid devices in the sorting and separation of CTCs from red blood cells (RBCs) and white blood cells (WBCs). Overall, in the first stage, the two-loop spiral microchannel structure allowed for the utilization of inertial forces for passive separation. In the second stage, SAWs were introduced to the device. Thus, five nodal pressure lines corresponding to the lateral position of the five outlets were generated. According to their physical properties, the cells were trapped and lined up on the corresponding nodal lines. The results showed that three different cell types (CTCs, RBCs, and WBCs) were successfully focused and collected from the different outlets of the microchannels by implementing the proposed multi-stage hybrid system.

Highlights

IntroductionCancer is one of the most pervasive and fatal diseases for humanity. Yet, microfluidic platforms can provide early cancer diagnosis, which is vital in the treatment of patients.According to the American Cancer Society, around 1.8 million new cancer cases were diagnosed in the United States of America in 2020, while the number of deaths was reported to be 606,520 [1]
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the number of deaths related to cancer can be reduced by up to 30% by diagnosing cancer before the metastasis stage [2]
In the hybrid microfluidic platform, we proposed focusing of the cells prior to their exposure to surface acoustic waves (SAWs) in acoustofluidic separation, which was obtained by using the spiral microchannel structure

Summary

Introduction

Cancer is one of the most pervasive and fatal diseases for humanity. Yet, microfluidic platforms can provide early cancer diagnosis, which is vital in the treatment of patients.According to the American Cancer Society, around 1.8 million new cancer cases were diagnosed in the United States of America in 2020, while the number of deaths was reported to be 606,520 [1]. Cancer involves an abnormal change of the cell’s shape and function due to defects in the genetic material or DNA, which differentiates these cells from healthy ones [3,4] These modified cells experience cell proliferation, multiply rapidly in an uncontrolled manner, gather in groups, and form tumors. The isolation of CTCs from a blood sample enables further understanding of a patient’s health, since these cells carry different genomic and phenotypic properties with respect to primary tumor cells [7]. This has been the main motivation for many valuable studies in the literature conducted during the last decade

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Results

Conclusion