CTC-Race: Single-Cell Motility Assay of Circulating Tumor Cells from Metastatic Lung Cancer Patients.

Distinctive subpopulations of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) with increased motility are considered to possess enhanced tumor-initiating potential and contribute to metastasis. Single-cell analysis of the migratory CTCs may increase our understanding of the metastatic process, yet most studies are limited by technical challenges associated with the isolation and characterization of these cells due to their extreme scarcity and heterogeneity. We report a microfluidic method based on CTCs' chemotactic motility, termed as CTC-Race assay, that can analyze migrating CTCs from metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with advanced tumor stages and enable concurrent biophysical and biochemical characterization of them with single-cell resolution.

Simultaneous biochemical and functional phenotyping of single circulating tumor cells using ultrahigh throughput and recovery microfluidic devices.

Profiling circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in cancer patients' blood samples is critical to understand the complex and dynamic nature of metastasis. This task is challenged by the fact that CTCs are not only extremely rare in circulation but also highly heterogeneous in their molecular programs and cellular functions. Here we report a combinational approach for the simultaneous biochemical and functional phenotyping of patient-derived CTCs, using an integrated inertial ferrohydrodynamic cell separation (iFCS) method and a single-cell microfluidic migration assay.

Label-free inertial-ferrohydrodynamic cell separation with high throughput and resolution.

Rapid and label-free separation of target cells from biological samples provided unique opportunity for disease diagnostics and treatment. However, even with advanced technologies for cell separation, the limited throughput, high cost and low separation resolution still prevented their utility in separating cells with well-defined physical features from a large volume of biological samples. Here we described an ultrahigh-throughput microfluidic technology, termed as inertial-ferrohydrodynamic cell separation (inertial-FCS), that rapidly sorted through over 60 milliliters of samples at a throughput of 100 000 cells per second in a label-free manner, differentiating the cells based on their physical diameter difference with ∼1-2 μm separation resolution.