Design of a novel integrated microfluidic chip for continuous separation of circulating tumor cells from peripheral blood cells

Cancer is one of the foremost causes of death globally. Late-stage presentation, inaccessible diagnosis, and treatment are common challenges in developed countries. Detection, enumeration of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) as early as possible can reportedly lead to more effective treatment. The isolation of CTC at an early stage is challenging due to the low probability of its presence in peripheral blood. In this study, we propose a novel two-stage, label-free, rapid, and continuous CTC separation device based on hydrodynamic inertial focusing and dielectrophoretic separation. The dominance and differential of wall-induced inertial lift force and Dean drag force inside a curved microfluidic channel results in size-based separation of Red Blood Cells (RBC) and platelets (size between 2–4 µm) from CTC and leukocytes (9–12.2 µm). A numerical model was used to investigate the mechanism of hydrodynamic inertial focusing in a curvilinear microchannel. Simulations were done with the RBCs, platelets, CTCs, and leukocytes (four major subtypes) to select the optimized value of the parameters in the proposed design. In first stage, the focusing behavior of microscale cells was studied to sort leukocytes and CTCs from RBCs, and platelets while viable CTCs were separated from leukocytes based on their inherent electrical properties using dielectrophoresis in the second stage. The proposed design of the device was evaluated for CTC separation efficiency using numerical simulations. This study considered the influence of critical factors like aspect ratio, dielectrophoretic force, channel size, flow rate, separation efficiency, and shape on cell separation. Results show that the proposed device yields viable CTC with 99.5% isolation efficiency with a throughput of 12.2 ml/h.