Microfluidics-based Liquid Biopsies

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "B:Biology and Biomedicine".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2020) | Viewed by 6954

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, INSERM, Sorbonne Université, USPC, Université Paris Descartes, Université Paris Diderot, Team MEPPOT, CNRS SNC 5014, Equipe labellisée Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer, 75006 Paris, France
Interests: microfluidics; cancer; liquid biopsy; cancer biomarkers; droplet-based microfluidics; 3D tissues; cancer model; circulating tumor cells; circulating biomarkers

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Inserm UMR-S 1172, Lille, France
Interests: droplet-based microfluidics; BioMEMS; microbiology; molecular biology; cancer research; synthetic biology

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

Liquid biopsies provide a minimally invasive screening option for the analysis of tumor-specific material in biological fluids, such as the peripheral blood samples of patients. The analysis of circulating tumor cells or the tracking of tumor specific genetic or epigenetic alterations in cell-free circulating nucleic acids can provide real-time information, allowing for the detection of early-stage cancer, monitoring disease progression, predicting a response to drugs, and providing personalized treatment options. Thanks to recent technological advances, the field of liquid biopsies has now passed the proof-of-concept period and is beginning to find application in clinics. With the ability to manipulate fluids inside the architectures with dimensions that are comparable to the size of single cells, and with the ability to perform highly sensitive and quantitative analyses, microfluidic technologies have shown great potential for providing the tools needed for the handling of liquid biopsies.

With this Special Issue, we aim to tackle the recent, innovative microfluidics-based tools and the detection techniques for the handling and analysis of circulating tumor cells, exosomes, circulating tumor DNA, or circulating RNA, and we provide a detailed discussion regarding the potential opportunities for microfluidics-based approaches in cancer diagnostics. 

Dr. Valérie Taly
Dr. Deniz Pekin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • microfluidics
  • cancer
  • liquid biopsy
  • circulating tumor DNA
  • circulating RNA
  • circulating tumor cells
  • colorectal cancer
  • liquid biopsy
  • biomarkers

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

12 pages, 2701 KiB  
Article
Sequential Cell-Processing System by Integrating Hydrodynamic Purification and Dielectrophoretic Trapping for Analyses of Suspended Cancer Cells
by Jongho Park, Takayuki Komori, Toru Uda, Keiichi Miyajima, Teruo Fujii and Soo Hyeon Kim
Micromachines 2020, 11(1), 47; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11010047 - 30 Dec 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3494
Abstract
Microfluidic devices employing dielectrophoresis (DEP) have been widely studied and applied in the manipulation and analysis of single cells. However, several pre-processing steps, such as the preparation of purified target samples and buffer exchanges, are necessary to utilize DEP forces for suspended cell [...] Read more.
Microfluidic devices employing dielectrophoresis (DEP) have been widely studied and applied in the manipulation and analysis of single cells. However, several pre-processing steps, such as the preparation of purified target samples and buffer exchanges, are necessary to utilize DEP forces for suspended cell samples. In this paper, a sequential cell-processing device, which is composed of pre-processing modules that employ deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) and a single-cell trapping device employing an electroactive microwell array (EMA), is proposed to perform the medium exchange followed by arraying single cells sequentially using DEP. Two original microfluidic devices were efficiently integrated by using the interconnecting substrate containing rubber gaskets that tightly connect the inlet and outlet of each device. Prostate cancer cells (PC3) suspended in phosphate-buffered saline buffer mixed with microbeads were separated and then resuspended into the DEP buffer in the integrated system. Thereafter, purified PC3 cells were trapped in a microwell array by using the positive DEP force. The achieved separation and trapping efficiencies exceeded 94% and 93%, respectively, when using the integrated processing system. This study demonstrates an integrated microfluidic device by processing suspended cell samples, without the requirement of complex preparation steps. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics-based Liquid Biopsies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

10 pages, 2788 KiB  
Article
Integration of Hierarchical Micro-/Nanostructures in a Microfluidic Chip for Efficient and Selective Isolation of Rare Tumor Cells
by Shunqiang Wang, Younghyun Cho, Xuanhong Cheng, Shu Yang, Yi Liu and Yaling Liu
Micromachines 2019, 10(10), 698; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi10100698 - 14 Oct 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3049
Abstract
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are important clinical markers for both cancer early diagnosis and prognosis. Various techniques have been developed in the past decade to isolate and quantify these cells from the blood while microfluidic technology attracts significant attention due to better controlled [...] Read more.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are important clinical markers for both cancer early diagnosis and prognosis. Various techniques have been developed in the past decade to isolate and quantify these cells from the blood while microfluidic technology attracts significant attention due to better controlled microenvironment. When combined with advanced nanotechnologies, CTC isolation performance in microfluidic devices can be further improved. In this article, by extending the wavy-herringbone concept developed earlier in our team, we prepared a hierarchical microfluidic chip by introducing a uniform coating of nanoparticles with anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) on wavy microgrooves. This hierarchical structured platform not only maintains the capture purity of the wavy-herringbone structure but improves the capture efficiency thanks to the larger surface area to volume ratio brought by nanoparticles. Our results demonstrated a capture efficiency of almost 100% at a low shear rate of 60/s. Even at a higher shear rate of 400/s, the hierarchical micro/nanostructures demonstrated an enhancement of up to ~3-fold for capture efficiency (i.e., 70%) and ~1.5-fold for capture purity (i.e., 68%), compared to wavy-herringbone structures without nanoparticle coating. With these promising results, this hierarchical structured platform represents a technological advancement for CTC isolation and cancer care. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics-based Liquid Biopsies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop