In-flow measurement of cell-cell adhesion using oscillatory inertial microfluidics.

Multicellular clusters in circulation can exhibit a substantially different function and biomarker significance compared to individual cells. Notably, clusters of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are much more effective initiators of metastasis than single CTCs, and correlate with worse patient prognoses. Measuring the cell-cell adhesion strength of CTC clusters is a critical step towards understanding their subsistence in the circulation and mechanism of elevated tumorigenicity.

Inertial Focusing of Microparticles in Curvilinear Microchannels.

A passive, continuous and size-dependent focusing technique enabled by "inertial microfluidics", which takes advantage of hydrodynamic forces, is implemented in this study to focus microparticles. The objective is to analyse the decoupling effects of inertial forces and Dean drag forces on microparticles of different sizes in curvilinear microchannels with inner radius of 800 μm and curvature angle of 280°, which have not been considered in the literature related to inertial microfluidics. This fundamental approach gives insight into the underlying physics of particle dynamics and offers continuous, high-throughput, label-free and parallelizable size-based particle separation.