Figure 4.

Validation of the multifunctional surfaces using cancer cell-spiked blood specimens. (a) A set of representative images of the captured tumor cells from blood samples on the multifunctional stripes with aEpCAM. Note the left blood cells (nonfluorescence cells) on the multifunctional surface were between 10% and 50%, which indicated that the purity of the captured cancer cells is between 50% and 90% (scale bar = 100 μm). (b) Detection sensitivity of the multifunctional surfaces was significantly higher, by up to 20-fold, than that of the surfaces with only antibody stripes. The surface marker-dependent bindings of cancer cell models were also observed. Error bars: standard error (n = 4).