Table 1.

A few microfluidics-based CTC enrichment techniques.

Name	Enrichment Technique	Type (Physical or Biological)	Key Findings
Herringbone (HB)-Chip	Surface affinity	Biological	CTCs were detected in 93% of patients with metastatic disease [13].
Nano Velcro	Cell affinity	Biological	Capable of detecting, isolating, and purifying CTCs from blood samples with high efficiency for subsequent molecular analyses [28,29].
Nanoparticle-herringbone microfluidic chip (NP-HBCTC-Chip)	Surface affinity	Biological	Enhanced capture efficiency and recovery of isolated CTCs [30].
PEDOT Nano Velcro Chips	Cell affinity	Biological	Ability to achieve high cell purity as well as preserve the integrity of RNA transcripts from the purified cells [31].
CaTCh FISH	Magnetic separation/fluorescence in situ hybridization	Physical	Capture CTCs for in situ RNA analysis [32,33].
Two-stage microfluidic chip	Size and asymmetry based capturing	Physical	High rate (99%) CTC clusters recovery with 87% viability [34,35].
Bait-trap chip	In situ rolling circle amplification (RCA) method	Physical	Accurate and ultrasensitive capture of live CTCs from peripheral blood [35].
3D Palladium Filter	Lithography plus electroforming process	Physical	Enumeration and isolation of CTCs for genetic analysis [36].
Pillar-X	Bimodular microfluidic device	Biophysical	Efficiently captures both single cells and clusters and sorts them based on size, cohesiveness, and epithelial identity [37].
Dielectrophoretic field-flow-fractionation (DEP-FFF)	Batch-mode microfluidic di-electrophoresis method	Physical	70–75% capture efficiency [38,39].
Parsortix™ Cell Separation System	Microfluidic particle separation technology	Biophysical	High capture efficiency and viable CTCs for downstream analyses [40].