Abstract
High degree of difficulty in the treatment of cancer is due to cancer metastasis. In the transfer process, it will produce "circulating tumor cells" (Circulating Tumor Cell, CTC). Studies show the amount of circulating tumor cells is correlated to probability of survival of patient. As the number of CTCs is quite few, we expect to undergo a gentle way in detection process in order not to lose too many CTCs during the sample preparation process. In the traditional way of staining process by mixing and centrifugation procedures, not only a long process (1.5 hours for 3 dyes) is usually required but also the centrifugation force is harmful for cell viability. To solve this issue, a Three-Dimensional Microwell Perfusion-Array is designed in this study to perform gentle fluorescence-removal process by diffusion-based flow processes on CTCs and WBCs without centrifuging. In this study, clinical whole blood samples from three VI TNM stage cancer patients were tested on SACA chips [1] after pre-centrifuging out erythrocytes and staining.