Microfluidic Platforms for Cancer Diagnosis

Cancer has emerged as one of the most severe non-communicable diseases in the pastdecades. Different medical and bioengineering approaches have been developed to gain moreinsights into this disease. More recently, microfluidics technology has been intensivelyutilized for study of human disease such as cancer. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs), cancercells of solid tumor origin that are shed into the blood stream from tumors of patients, canlead to the metastatic spread and subsequent growth of tumour cells at distant sites within thebody. Detection and characterization of CTCs from minimally invasive liquid biopsy provides critical insights into tumor biology and is critical for companion diagnostics andcare. The isolation and recovery of these CTCs is very challenging, primarily due of their lowabundance in peripheral blood and their physiological and morphological similarity to otherhematologic cells.In this seminar, I will describe our recent efforts in development of novel microfluidic toolsfor enrichment of cancer cells from blood. I will discuss how simple micro-engineered tools(i.e., fabricated using conventional micromilling, 3D printing and MEMS techniques) can becombined with fluid mechanics concepts in order to develop functional devices for versatileapplications. I will also give details of our recent works for study of cancer heterogeneity atsingle-cell level using advanced microfluidic systems