Sorting breast cancer cells based on deformability

Due to their direct coupling to the physiology of the cells, the physical properties are especially attractive as markers for sorting and characterization of cancer cells. Where molecular surface markers are lacking, the physical properties can instead serve as inherent markers for separation. This is especially interesting for cancer cells where there are indications that soft cells are more metastatic than hard cells. Our work is expected to provide a deeper understanding of deformability based sorting based on deterministic lateral displacement (DLD). This will subsequently be used to optimize DLD devices for characterization and fractionation of cancer cells into subpopulations of different mechanical properties. Our aim is to develop a device to help oncologists gain more accurate prognoses and better monitoring of the effect of treatment. (Less)