Abstract
The detection and separation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are crucial in early cancer diagnosis and cancer prognosis. Filtration through a thin film is one of the size and deformability based separation methods, which can isolate rare CTCs from the peripheral blood of cancer patients regardless of their heterogeneity. In this paper, volume of fluid (VOF) multiphase flow models are employed to clarify the cells’ filtering processes. The cells may deform significantly when they enter a channel constriction, which will induce cell membrane stress and damage if the area strain is larger than the critical value. Therefore, the cellular damage criterion characterized by membrane area strain is presented in our model, i.e., the lysis limit of the lipid bilayer is taken as the critical area strain. Under this criterion, we discover that the microfilters with slit-shaped pores do less damage to cells than those with circular pores. The influence of contact angle between the microfilters and blood cells on cellular injury is also discussed. Moreover, the optimal film thickness and flux in our simulations are obtained as 0.5 μm and 0.375 mm/s, respectively. These findings will provide constructive guidance for the improvement of next generation microfilters with higher throughput and less cellular damage.
Highlights
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancerous cells in the peripheral blood shed from primary tumors
circulating tumor cells (CTCs) detection and separation are vital in early cancer diagnosis, cancer prognosis, and therapeutic assessment [3,4,5]
The separation of CTCs from normal blood cells can be achieved by arresting CTCs while letting
Summary
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancerous cells in the peripheral blood shed from primary tumors. They are carried around in the circulation of a cancer patient prior to the emergence of clinical symptoms, which means that CTCs can be a harbinger of cancer formation and metastasis [1,2]. The total amount of blood in the human body is about 5000 mL. Even if all of the blood in the human body is filtered at once, the total number that we can obtain is 5000 or so. To illuminate the role that CTCs play in the development of cancer, effective strategies for separating extremely low concentrations of tumor cells must be put forward. The methodology of the separation of CTCs can be divided into two major categories: biophysical methods and biochemical methods [6,7,8,9,10]
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