Rapid and efficient capturing of circulating tumor cells from breast cancer Patient's whole blood via the antibody functionalized microfluidic (AFM) chip

Accurate enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patient's blood functions as a form of “liquid biopsy”, which is pivotal for cancer screening, prognosis, and diagnosis. Herein, we demonstrate a novel antibody functionalized microfluidic (AFM) chip that rapidly and accurately qualifies CTCs from breast cancer patient's whole blood. The AFM chip consists of three buffering zones, and four main capturing zones filled with equilateral triangular pillars and periodically distributed obstacles. We validate the AFM chip with three Epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) positive cancer cell lines, including breast (MCF-7), prostate (PC3), and lung cancer cell lines (A549), achieving capture efficiencies of 99.5%, 98.5%, and 96.72%, respectively, at a flow rate of 0.6 mL/hour. We further confirm the efficacy of the AFM chip with five advanced breast cancer patients' whole blood to capture EpCAM+/CK19+/CD45-/DAPI + CTCs. Interestingly, high number of CTCs were identified from each patient's 1 mL whole blood (595–2270), The AFM chip is highly efficient at rapidly capturing CTCs from cancer patients' whole blood without requiring extra equipment, which is critically beneficial for clinical application. • Efficient and high throughput capturing of circulating tumor cells is demonstrated. • The AFM chip is able to on-chip identify and count the captured cells. • The AFM chip has the ability to capture CTCs from the advanced breast cancer patients' whole blood without any pretreatment for the blood.