Advances in Isolating Circulating Tumor Cells With Microfluidic Chips

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are shed by primary or metastatic tumors, undergo the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and enter into the peripheral blood of patients with metastatic cancers. Its critical roles in cancer research and clinical diagnostics are gradually being recognized. The presence of CTCs, especially the number in peripheral blood can not only be used for early diagnosis of cancer but also be used to assess prognosis, and monitor tumor metastasis and recurrence. Microfluidic chip as a high-throughput, miniaturized cell experimental platform has been used in CTCs sorting. In this review, we highlight recent progresses of CTCs capturing of microfluidic chip system and focus on the capture theory, chip structure and capture efficiency of various types of chips. At last, we prospect for the application foreground of microfluidic chip technology in CTCs isolation.