An integrated microfluidic chip capable of whole blood treatment and pneumatically-modulated filtering for detecting circulating tumor cells in clinical specimen

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) could be detected in peripheral blood of primary tumor in cancer patients and are served as a potential indicator for early diagnosis and prognosis of cancer metastasis. This study reported an integrated microfluidic chip which is capable of performing a procedure to eliminate red blood cells (RBCs) and enrich the cancer cells in the whole blood by using a pneumatically-modulated filter. With this approach, CTCs could be easily isolated and concentrated, and be stored for further investigation. We also successfully performed an on-chip fluorescence staining of cancer cells captured by a HCT-8 specific aptamer in the whole blood.