Lab-on-chip for the isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells

A consortium of seven European partners has undertaken the challenging task to develop a miniaturized system capable to isolate and characterize circulating tumor cells (CTC), which should have its use as a time and labor saving, minimally invasive tool for cancer therapy selection and monitoring and for the detection of recurrent disease. This paper reports on the general concept of the system and elaborates on the development of the different modules and their integration.