Abstract

Microfluidic Platforms for Human Diseases: From Diagnosis to Therapeutics

Chwee Teck Lim, Provost’s Chair Professor, National University of Singapore

The presence and frequency of rare diseased cells such as Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in bloodstream of patients with epithelial cancers can provide valuable insights into the severity of the disease and treatment evaluations. In fact, the presence and number of these diseased cells in peripheral blood can potentially be used for early detection, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring. Nevertheless, their numbers are rare, less than ten CTCs to about a hundred cells in 1ml of blood. The isolation of diseased cells using microfluidics is attractive as the flow conditions can be accurately manipulated to achieve an efficient separation. Here, we will demonstrate several effective microfluidic separation methods by utilizing the unique biophysical property differences such as size and deformability of diseased cells from that of blood cells as well as exploiting the fluid dynamics in specially designed microfluidic channels to isolate the generally stiffer and larger CTCs from the more deformable and smaller blood cells. Using this approach, we are able to retrieve viable CTCs with high isolation efficiency and purity. With blood specimens from cancer patients, we confirmed the successful detection, isolation and retrieval of CTCs. We will also demonstrate how some of these microfluidic devices can be further developed into platforms for therapeutic purposes such as for blood cleansing of bacteria and cancer cells. In particular, we will showcase the potential of microfluidics in cleansing the blood of patients suffering from sepsis through demonstrating the extracorporeal removal of bacteria from blood.