Nanomaterial Integrated Microfluidic Chip For Capture And Identification Of Circulating Tumor Cells

Circulating Tumor Cells(C irculating Tumor Cells,C TCs)as biomarkers of cancer have important significance in liquid biopsy.C TCs play an important role in cancer diagnosis and prognosis monitoring in the future because it carries a large amount of nucleic acid and protein information.However,a few number of C TCs in peripheral blood and there is heterogeneity in tumor,so it is of great clinical significance to develop an enrichment platform with high sensitivity,efficiency and activity to capture and detect circulating tumor cells.In the research progress of integrated nanoscience technology and microfluidic technology for tumor cell capture,nanomaterials,as a hot field of current scientific research,have been widely used in the tumor cells capture due to their unique properties including good biocompatibility,surface modifiability and high flexibility.Meanwhile,microfluidic chips,as a platform widely used in the biomedical field,are widely used in the capture and detection of tumor cells due to their advantages such as high similarity with cell size,high integration,good experimental controllability and the ability to enrich and analyze single cells.Considering that the enrichment rate and viability of circulating tumor cells directly determine the diagnosis of cancer patients and the study on the mechanism of C TCs,we developed new methods for the enrichment of C TCs based on the characteristics and detection requirements of CTCs and the problems encountered in the current cell capture,and we combined with the advantages of microfluidic chips and multi-functional nanomaterials.The main work includes:1.Based on the excellent characteristics of different nanomaterials,a kind of immunofluorescence magnetic nanoparticles was prepared by combining luminescent quantum dots(Zn S:Mn²⁺)and magnetic nanoparticles(Fe₃O₄)wrapped in silica spheres,and its surface was modified with high-expression antibody Anti-Ep CAM to achieve the dual functions of cell capture and identification.We used this composite nanomaterial to optimize the cell capture process,and after the cell capture,we could directly observe the captured cells by using the luminescence characteristics of the nanomaterial without traditional identification methods,which provided great help for subsequent cell detection.2.Based on the advantages of microfluidic microchips at the micron level and Zn O nanowires at the nanometer level,Zn O nanowires were grown on the gear-structure PDMS pillar and highly expressed antibody Anti-Ep CAM was modified on pillar surface.Gear-structure pillar provide more sites for cell attachment,and the introduction of nanostructures on rough surfaces improves the capture efficiency.Meanwhile,the bio-degradability of Zn O was used to directly release C TCs with high activity.We provide a multi-functional microfluidic chip that integrates CTCs capture and release,and has been verified in the blood of breast cancer patients.