Advances in analytical microfluidic workflows for differential cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Abstract Early detection and functional analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in liquid biopsy rather than counting them offer great promise as physicians can improve differential diagnosis for second‐ or third‐line treatment beyond today's genotype information from next‐generation sequencing and the limited statistical power of histopathology analysis. Microfluidics holds a great potential for an accurate and reliable isolation and analytical examination of cancer liquid biopsy. This review describes fundamentals and technological breakthroughs of immunolabeled and label‐free analytical microfluidic chips (µ‐chips), developed to screen and examine CTCs. The impacts of highly‐selective biomarkers and their features on the assembly and renovation of high‐tech immunolabeled and label‐free µ‐chips are discussed. Owing to significant impacts of multifunctional nanostructures on the performance of analytical µ‐chips based on engineering‐driven workflows, this review also focuses on their critical roles for screening CTCs benefited from the nanoscale physicochemical features. The advantages of integrated analytical µ‐chips are then identified and examined regarding their dominated sorting technologies. Furthermore, this review explores innovative technologies incorporating downstream cellular‐/molecular analysis into integrative analytical µ‐chips to pave the way for non‐invasive point‐of‐care diagnostics.

Keywords

• circulating tumor cells
• integrative microfluidics
• lab‐on‐a‐chip
• lab‐on‐a‐tip
• NanoBioAnalytics