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Description
There is a consensus among researchers that cancer stem cells are the cause of metastasis in cancer patients. Isolation and capture of these rare cells continues to be a daunting task that, to this day, requires an innovative and efficient method. While a variety of approaches have been suggested over the past several years, immunocapturing in a microfluidics platform carries a substantial promise as shown by recent published works. In this work, we present a microfluidic device to capture cancer stem cells. Using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold, we have created a series of 32 bifurcating microfluidic channels that utilizes a previously used herringbone design for the slowing and chaotic mixing of the patients’ blood. This creates more cell-to-wall interaction time increasing the probabilities of capturing these rare cells. The idea displayed in this work is to make best use of the channel by combining the effect of the herringbones with pillars, or traps, to create the next generation, more efficient way of capturing these aforementioned rare cells. These pillars will work as traps, as well as increase the surface area of the walls, allowing for a huge increase in efficiency to capture these cells, specifically cancer stem cell clusters. We will be using a bead-flow characterization to verify the results of our Finite Element Analysis. Through the help of our clinical collaborators, we are able to coat the channel walls with anti-bodies to target and capture specific cancer stem cells. Patients’ blood is then passed through the microfluidic cancer stem cell capture chip and released where it can then be sequenced and analyzed.
