Microfluidic separation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood

Despite the presence of a vast number of academic and commercial technologies, there still is no CTC-based universal methodology for cancer diagnosis and/or treatment in clinical usage. This is because our current understanding of clinical features or significance of CTCs is strongly biased by the technology used to isolate these rare cells. The system described in this paper is intended to be a significant contribution in this respect by eliminating the main drawbacks of other CTC separation devices.