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Microfluidic-based cancer cell separation using active and passive mechanisms

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Abstract

The demand for on-chip cancer cell separation in biomedical, bio-sensor, bio-detection, personalized medicine, and clinical diagnostic fields has resulted in a variety of studies focusing on this theme. Accurate, high-throughput, and non-invasive separation of individual cells is also an essential enabling technique to move cellular biology, biomedicine, and biotechnology forward. Due to its great potential to solve bio-related problems, this cutting-edge technique has become a topic of concern for many studies on micro-manipulation methods. Hence, we present here a comprehensive review on recent developments of cancer cell separation utilizing various microfluidic-based methods, including dielectrophoresis-, magnetic-, acoustic-, and passive microfluidic-based ones. The review includes an overview of how these methods work along with a description of the experimental results using each method as well as their respective advantages and disadvantages. The paper is wrapped up with a discussion of the current challenges and future prospects in the cell separation technique. Our conclusion is that this technique will allow more opportunities for biomedical and bioengineering researchers to improve lab-on-a-chip technologies, and will have far-reaching implications for bio-related studies and applications.

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Fig. 1

Reprinted with permission from (Becker et al. 1995). Copyright (1995) National Academy of Sciences

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Reprinted with permission from (Wang et al. 2000). Copyright (2000) American Chemical Society

Fig. 3

Reprinted with permission from (Park et al. 2005). Copyright (2005) Royal Society of Chemistry

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Reprinted with permission from (Moon et al. 2011). Copyright (2011) Royal Society of Chemistry

Fig. 5

Reprinted with permission from (Huang et al. 2013). Copyright (2013) Royal Society of Chemistry

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Reprinted with permission from (Chu et al. 2019). Copyright (2019) Elsevier

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Reprinted with permission from (Liu et al. 2007). Copyright (2007) Wiley

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Reprinted with permission from (Xu et al. 2011). Copyright (2011) Elsevier

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Reprinted with permission from (Earhart et al. 2014). Copyright (2014) Royal Society of Chemistry

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Reprinted with permission from (Reokrungruang et al. 2019). Copyright (2019) Elsevier

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Reprinted with permission from (Augustsson et al. 2012). Copyright (2012) American Chemical Society

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Reprinted with permission from (Wang et al. 2018). Copyright (2018) Elsevier

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Reprinted with permission from (Xu et al. 2009). Copyright (2009) American Chemical Society

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Reprinted with permission from (Kim et al. 2017). Copyright (2017) American Chemical Society

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 61973224, 61925307, U1613220, and 61803323), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (Project Nos.: 2019-KF-01-15 and 2019-ZD-0673), and the Scientific Research Innovation Cultivation Project of Shenyang Jianzhu University (Project No.: CXPY2017012).

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  1. Wenfeng Liang and Jing Liu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Shenyang Jianzhu University, Shenyang, 110168, China

    Wenfeng Liang, Jing Liu, Xieliu Yang & Qi Zhang

  2. School of Electromechanical and Automotive Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, China

    Wenguang Yang

  3. Department of Neurology, The People’s Hospital of Liaoning Province, Shenyang, 110016, China

    Hemin Zhang

  4. State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China

    Lianqing Liu

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  1. Wenfeng Liang
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  2. Jing Liu
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  3. Xieliu Yang
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  4. Qi Zhang
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  5. Wenguang Yang
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  6. Hemin Zhang
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  7. Lianqing Liu
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Correspondence to Wenfeng Liang, Hemin Zhang or Lianqing Liu.

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Liang, W., Liu, J., Yang, X. et al. Microfluidic-based cancer cell separation using active and passive mechanisms. Microfluid Nanofluid 24, 26 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-020-2331-x

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