Abstract
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have shown great promise as a potential tool in cancer diagnosis. To improve the CTCs recovery rate, we herein reported a new integrated microfluidic system which could perform red blood cells (RBCs) lysis, a negative selection process for depleting white blood cells (WBCs) and a positive selection process for specifically capturing target cancer cells by using aptamers. The entire process could be performed on a single chip and could be automated without any human intervention within one hour. When compared with the traditional negative or positive selection approach, the new platform may provide higher CTCs isolation efficiency, which could be crucial for cancer diagnosis.