Abstract B26: A new way of fabricating high-porosity parylene membranes for high-throughput capturing of viable circulating and exfoliated tumor cells from large-volume bodily fluids

Abstract

Abstract Liquid biopsy is a critical component in cancer precision medicine. The ability to capture rare cancer cells from liquid samples, such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood as well as exfoliated tumor cells (ETCs) from other body fluids, has shown great promises in cancer detection and prognosis, as well as understanding of cancer biology at different stages. Different ways have been developed for rare cancer cell capture, including biomarker-based immunocapture and capture through other physical processes, such as size, mechanical or dielectric properties, hydrodynamic fluids, etc. However, the throughputs of these techniques are limited to 0.2-2 mL/min. Recently, a high-porosity parylene membrane has been shown to be able to process sample at a fluid rate of > 100 mL/min, which would greatly extend the capability of CTC and ETC-based liquid biopsy. The high porosity of the membrane can also dramatically reduce the shear stress the tumor cells encountered during capture, which has been shown to be critical to maintain cell viability. However, the current parylene membrane fabrication involves deep Si reactive ion etching, which is an expensive process and not widely available. The release of the parylene membrane can also be challenging. We report here a new method to fabricate the parylene membrane using simple photolithography and reactive ion etching techniques. The fabricated parylene membranes and their capability of processing large volume sample for viable cell capture will be presented. Citation Format: Jian Gu, Inad Rabadi, Frederic Zenhausern, David Carpentieri, Jue Wang. A new way of fabricating high-porosity parylene membranes for high-throughput capturing of viable circulating and exfoliated tumor cells from large-volume bodily fluids [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Liquid Biopsies; Jan 13-16, 2020; Miami, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2020;26(11_Suppl):Abstract nr B26.