Abstract

Micropore-arrayed Filter for Rare Cell Separation in Liquid Biopsy

Wei Wang, Associate Professor, Peking University

Liquid biopsy has been widely considered as a game changer in the precision medicine for early detection, targeted therapy, dynamic monitoring of cancer. Separation of rare cancer cell from a large volume of clinical sample (>10 mL) is a branch of liquid biopsy. Many techniques have been already developed and, among them, micropore-arrayed filtration-based cell separation has been considered as the only technique competitive in operating sample with high throughput at mL/min along with a high recovery rate. However, it suffered from a high non-target cell contamination (low purity) and high risk of cell death (low viability). Moreover, all the present filtration was designed based on simply comparing the geometric sizes of the target cells and the micropore. As cells usually have a broad diameter distribution, the purity of the target cell after filtration is usually questionable, especially when the diameter distributions of target cell and background cell are overlapped. So it is critical to set-up a designable regulation of cell filtration through the micropore-arrayed filter. Here we proposed a designable regulation of cell filtration through micropore-arrayed filter, and demonstrated a highly efficient rare cell separation with a high throughput, recovery rate, purity and viability using an ultra-high-density honeycombed Parylene C micropore array. These advantages make our ultra-high-density honeycombed Parylene C micropore array attractive for potential clinical diagnosis and therapy based on liquid biopsy in the coming Precision Medicine.