Abstract

High throughput cell separation by a micropore-array filter

Wei Wang, Associate Professor, Peking University

A very large scale micropore array (640,000 micropores in 11 mm × 11 mm area) has been fabricated by a Parylene microfabrication technique. The interspace between the adjunctive micropores was obtained as small as 4 µm, which has been numerically demonstrated to be an important factor to minimize the shear stress on the captured cells. This minimized shear stress will be helpful to improve the recovery rate. The preliminary results indicated that the present micropore-array filter successfully achieved a high targeted cell separation yield of 96.5% and a high separation purity of 100% with a throughput as high as 2 mL/min. The present high throughput cell separation technique will be used as a powerful clinical tumor cell enrichment approach for various cancer diagnoses.