Table 3.
List of several representative CTCs isolation microfluidic chip in the past decades
| Microfluidic technologies | Antigen-based selection | Antigen-independent selection | Basic properties | Advantages | Ref. | Application in cancer diagnosis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CTC-chip | √ | The laminar flow of blood cells through the anti-EpCAM antibody-coated microposts in CTC-chip to capture CTCs. | Less damage to rare cells; Simplicity; Versatility; One-step manipulate. | 183 | 184 | |
| The herringbone chip | √ | The microvortices produced by herringbone grooves within the chip wall adequately mix the blood cells, increasing the interaction between CTCs and the anti-coated surface in chip. | Higher blood volume throughput; high capture efficiency and purity. | 185 | 186-190 | |
| Geometrically enhanced differential immunocapture (GEDI) | √ | The streamline deformation can help the target CTCs come into full contact with the immune coating on the wall; relative obstacle alignment uses the displacement generated by the impact between cells and obstacles to separate cells of different sizes. | High binding avidity and specificity; high cell capture efficiency and purity. | 191 | - | |
| NanoVelcro Microfluidic Device | √ | |||||
| CTC-ichip | √ | √ | The negative depletion of normal blood cells: using deterministic lateral displacement to isolate nucleated cells; using inertial focusing to align nucleated cells; deflecting and collecting magnetically tagged cells. | Automation; high-throughput; compatible with high-definition imaging and single-cell analysis. | 60 | 192-194 |
| Spiral chip | √ | Spiral chip generates the inertial and Dean drag forces with continuous flow in curved channels to separate cells. The principle of separation is based on the physical difference between CTCs and blood constituents. | Stable streamlines distribution; high flow rates; ultra-high throughput; simplify the assistant procedures in clinical experiments; Less damage to CTCs. | 195 | 196, 197 | |
| Straight chip | √ | The straight chip take advantage of cells inertial migration in the straight microchannel to separate CTCs with high purity by manipulating flow rate ratio. | High purity collection; high recovery rate; high throughput; predictable and tunable cutoff size. | 198 | 199 | |
| Nanotube-CTC-Chip | √ | Carbon nanotube surfaces and microarray batch manufacturing is combined to capture and separate CTCs; Red blood cell lysis (RBCL) and preferential adherence can enrich CTCs. | High capture efficiency; high purity. | 200 | - |