Abstract
Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a very aggressive biliary tract malignancy and currently there is no reliable biomarker for diagnosis. In this work, an integrated microfluidic platform capable of performing cell-based systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (Cell SELEX) process with limited human intervention has been demonstrated for screening of aptamers specific to CCA. Our new magnetic-bead-based microfluidic platform is capable of reducing the time consumed to a 1/6th as compared to previous works. Promising aptamer candidates could be successfully selected in just 5 or 6 cycles as compared to the conventional 15+ cycles.