Circulating tumor cells in microfluidic devices

Braam, E. (2013) Circulating tumor cells in microfluidic devices. Bachelor's Thesis, Biology.

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Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTC's) are extremely rare in the bloodstream (1:10⁹). It is useful to capture these CTC's because they give insight in cancer stage. In microfluidic systems – where laminar flow is present - blood can be tested and analyzed in a single step which ensures minimal discomfort for the patient compared to a biopsy. Also it is not very labor intensive for the hospital employee, with no need for a laboratory technician. Methods that use the difference of size and deformability of cancer cells compared to that of other blood components are widely developed. These techniques are not yet ready for clinical use, but are very likely to exceed the only FDA-approved Veridex Cellsearch. Because when size, deformability and electrical properties are used compared to the use of antibodies only, better recovery rates are obtained. Filters have a reasonably high-throughput, but formation of clusters causes obstruction and leads to the need for dilution, whereby the efficiency of capturing cancer cells in a short period of time decreases. Methods based on electrical properties are highly specific, so different kind of cancer cells can also be separated. They are, however, still too time consuming to be used in the separation of rare cancer cells from blood. Inertial migration based techniques seem to be most promising, especially when combined with enrichment steps such as hemolysis or the use of a paramagnetic capture mode magnetophoretic microseparator. In the future, antibodies in combination with hydrodynamic methods might even be used in the perfection of microdevices that capture and analyze CTC's from blood.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Degree programme:	Biology
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2018 07:52
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2018 07:52
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/10974

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