METHODS AND DEVICES FOR MULTI-DIMENSIONAL SEPARATION, ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF CIRCULATING TUMOUR CELLS

摘要

In most cancers, a significant factor in a poor outcome for the individual cancer victim is metastatic disease, i.e., dissemination of tumour cells to other parts of the human body via the circulation, such as distant organs, and their subsequent proliferation therein to form multiple other cancer tumours. The presence of circulating tumour cells, or CTCs, represents a vital intermediate step in this process and variations of a few CTCs within blood samples containing tens of billions of cells may denote the outcome for a patient or impact the cancer treatment regimen. At present no low cost field deployable technique for filtering CTCs exists. According to embodiments of the invention micro-machined filters with high aspect ratio, with and without, functionalization are employed to perform multi-parameter filtering for CTCs based upon compatibility with low cost semiconductor processes within multiple materials including silicon, polymers and silicon carbide.