Integrated Microfluidic Device for Enrichment and Identification of Circulating Tumor Cells from the Blood of Patients with Colorectal Cancer

Integrated device with high purity for circulating tumor cell (CTC) identification has been regarded as a key goal to make CTC analysis a “bench-to-bedside” technology. Here, we have developed a novel integrated microfluidic device that can enrich and identify the CTCs from the blood of patients with colorectal cancer. To enrich CTCs from whole blood, microfabricated trapping chambers were included in the miniaturized device, allowing for the isolation of tumor cells based on differences in size and deformability between tumor and normal blood cells. Microvalves were also introduced sequentially in the device, enabling automatic CTC enrichment as well as immunostaining reagent delivery. Under optimized conditions, the whole blood spiked with caco-2 cells passing through the microfluidic device after leukocyte depletion and approximately 73% of caco-2 cells were identified by epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) staining. In clinical samples, CTCs were detectable from all patients with advanced colorectal cancer within 3 h. In contrast, the number of CTCs captured on the device from the blood of healthy donors was significantly lower than that from the patients, suggesting the utilization of the integrated device for further molecular analyses of CTCs.