Micromachines (Apr 2014)

Raman-Spectroscopy Based Cell Identification on a Microhole Array Chip

  • Ute Neugebauer,
  • Christian Kurz,
  • Thomas Bocklitz,
  • Tina Berger,
  • Thomas Velten,
  • Joachim H. Clement,
  • Christoph Krafft,
  • Jürgen Popp

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/mi5020204
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 2
pp. 204 – 215

Abstract

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Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood of cancer patients are valuable prognostic markers and enable monitoring responses to therapy. The extremely low number of CTCs makes their isolation and characterization a major technological challenge. For label-free cell identification a novel combination of Raman spectroscopy with a microhole array platform is described that is expected to support high-throughput and multiplex analyses. Raman spectra were registered from regularly arranged cells on the chip with low background noise from the silicon nitride chip membrane. A classification model was trained to distinguish leukocytes from myeloblasts (OCI-AML3) and breast cancer cells (MCF-7 and BT-20). The model was validated by Raman spectra of a mixed cell population. The high spectral quality, low destructivity and high classification accuracy suggests that this approach is promising for Raman activated cell sorting.

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