Microfluidics for antibody-independent separation of circulating tumor cells

Abstract

Separation of circulating tumor cells (CTC) from the blood without using antibodies is a key challenge in the diagnosis of cancer. This article has reviewed few antibody-independent techniques governed by cell size on microfluidics platform. Microdevices employing micro-pore filters, dielectrophoresis, acoustophoresis and inertia that is popular in various research labs are studied in detail from the literature and discussed shortly. The inertia based technique in spiral microchannel seems to be more promising towards the development of future point-of-care (POC) microdevices for CTCs separation.