Separation of tumor cells from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) via microgrooves enhanced immiscible filtration assisted by surface tension (ME-IFAST)

Separation and characterization of lung cancer cells is of great importance to the diagnosis and treatment assessment of this disease. Here, we reported a microgrooves-enhanced IFAST strategy (ME-IFAST) for tumor cell separation from clinical BALF sample. After the process, we enhanced the efficiency of beads bonded on each cell, from around 14.6 to 28.8 beads per cell, and decreased the number of un-bonded beads by 30.2% as well as cells with no bonded beads. It has been proved to be an efficient size amplification performance with a low free magnetic beads background.