Abstract 3069: Radial flow microfluidic device for high-throughput affinity-based isolation of circulating tumor cells

Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are believed to play an important role in metastasis, a process accounting for the majority of cancer-related deaths. They offer a non-invasive biopsy technique to study tumors and are shown to be useful prognostic indicators. Because of their rarity in the bloodstream, microfluidic isolation techniques are complex and time-consuming, and provide yields of CTCs insufficient or non-viable for studies other than enumeration. Additionally, due to the low processing speeds, the volumes of blood processed remain limited and can be a hindrance to obtaining higher yields of CTCs and their potential use as biomarkers of early diagnosis. Here we report a novel high throughput microfluidic technology, the OncoBean Chip, employing radial flow that introduces a varying shear profile across the device and enables efficient cell capture by affinity at high flow rates. The cell recovery from whole blood was validated with cancer cell lines H1650 and MCF7, and the OncoBean Chip achieved an efficiency >80% at a throughput of 10 mL/hr, a flow rate yet achieved only in physical size based separation techniques. A cell viability of 92.91% shows that the cells recovered at high throughput could still be used for downstream analysis. Clinical competence was demonstrated in blood specimens from breast, pancreatic and lung cancer patients. The OncoBean Chip thus holds potential applications in the diagnosis of early stage cancers, where the low numbers of CTCs could be enriched using this novel device. Citation Format: Vasudha Murlidhar, Rishindra M. Reddy, Mina Zeinali, Svetlana Grabauskiene, Mostafa Ghannad-Rezaie, Max S. Wicha, Diane M. Simeone, Nithya Ramnath, Sunitha Nagrath. Radial flow microfluidic device for high-throughput affinity-based isolation of circulating tumor cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3069. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3069