Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are found in the
peripheral blood of patients with metastatic cancers, which
have critical significance in cancer prognosis and diagnostics.
Enumeration is significantly valuable since number of CTCs
is strongly correlated to severity of disease. This article is
proposed and demonstrated an antibody-coated, size-based
microfluidic chip with wave-shaped arrays could efficiently
capture CTCs combining two separation methods of both
size- and deformability-based and affinity-based segregation.
Utilizing immunocapture of capture chemistry of Epithelial
Cell Adhension Molecule (EpCAM), tumor cells could be
captured by narrow gaps or have a friction with microposts
edges to realize both immune-affinity and size capture. This
wave-shaped layout of microfluidic chip with varying gaps
between adjacent circular microposts can generate perpendic-
ular velocities to the fluidic direction. This oriented fluidic
direction will carry cells to next smaller neighboring gap and
then be captured gradually. The experiment results indicate
capture efficiency is ~90% and viability is ~95% after extract-
ed and cultured 3 days. Furthermore, this chip has been vali-
dated for whole blood with cancer cell lines and mimic patient

• Combination of antibody-coated, physical-based microfluidic chip with wave-shaped arrays for isolating circulating tumor cells