Tumor cell capture patterns around aptamer-immobilized microposts in microfluidic devices

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have shown potential for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Affinity-based CTC isolation methods have been proved to be efficient for CTC detection in clinical blood samples. One of the popular choices for affinity-based CTC isolation is to immobilize capture agents onto an array of microposts in microchannels, providing high CTC capture efficiency due to enhanced interactions between tumor cells and capture agents on the microposts. However, how the cells interact with microposts under different flow conditions and what kind of capture pattern results from the interactions have not been fully investigated; a full understanding of these interactions will help to design devices and choose experimental conditions for higher CTC capture effeciency. We report our study on their interaction and cell distribution patterns around microposts under different flow conditions. Human acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells (CCRF-CEM) were used as target cancer cells in this study, while the Sgc...