Microfluidic Flow Retardation for Tagless Cancer Cell Analysis
Abstract
Solid tumors are highly heterogeneous with respect to cell type. A small fraction of cells with the capacity to metastasize will dictate the ultimate prognosis of a tumor. Metastatic potential is dictated to a great extent by the expression pattern of cell surface proteins. Population averaged gene expression profiling by microarrays does not capture the signature of this minority subpopulation and therefore lacks the prognostic specificity to impact clinical practice. Needle aspirates of tumors reveal only a malignant phenotype in the few cells that are obtained and there are currently no good methods for characterizing cells when only a few are available. To address this need, we undertook to develop a microfluidic device to detect the surface protein expression profile of individual cancer cells without prior labeling. The device will be a microfluidic channel with multiple tandem antibody-coated patches over which cancer cells are directed by a microsyringe pump at flow rates of nanoliters per second. The transient interactions with surface ligands result in retardation of cell velocities over patches with cognate ligands of expressed surface proteins and normal cell velocities over patches coated with ligands that don't recognize surface proteins expressed by the cell. This will permit assigning an individual expression pattern for the proteins recognized by the immobilized antibodies for each cell. We hypothesize that the use of this device will make it possible to identify rare cells in a tumor with specific capacities to metastasize to unique organs based on their cell surface expression profiles with sensitivities and specificities of greater than 99%.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA566937
Entities
People
- Robert Wieder
Organizations
- University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey