MicroFlow-Through Wool Cartridge for 3D Enrichment, Rapid Manipulation, and Label-Free Detection of Prostate Cancer Cells in Urine*

Prostate cancer (PCa) remains one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide and is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men. In the UAE, PCa is the third most common malignancy in men. Late diagnosis of PCa is generally incurable, yet survival rates are considerably high when diagnosed early on. Therefore, there is a continuous demand for methods to identify PCa at its early stage and to monitor cancer progression during and after therapy. Since the 1980s, examining elevations in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels and abnormalities in prostate gland size has emerged as a valuable source for detecting PCa, but with controversial outcomes leading to overtreatments and unnecessary tissue biopsies. Over the last decade, utilizing the number of circulating tumor cells found in the bloodstream as a biomarker for PCa detection has been of great interest, but with labor-intensive and expensive methodologies limited by conventional invasive blood withdrawals. Lately, utilizing viable PCa cells in urine has become an attractive pursuit for non-invasive detection of PCa, but the methods available to provide efficient and specific PCa cell enrichment and detection from urine have their limitations. To address this gap, we developed a coupled duo-approach for PCa cell isolation and detection from urine samples: The first approach is to rapidly enrich urinary cells through a novel microflow-through cartridge with a 3D fiber network of quartz glass wool (named as wool cartridge); and the second is to label-free discriminate the resuspended entrapped PCa cells from other urinary cells using fluorescence spectrophotometry. We expect our technology to be applicable to other urinary tract cancers such as bladder and urethral cancers.