DESIGN OF AN AUTOMATIC SYSTEM BASED ON FLEXIBLE MICRO SPRING ARRAYS FOR VIABLE CANCER CELL ENRICHMENT
Open Access
Author:
Zou, Xin
Graduate Program:
Bioengineering
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
March 24, 2017
Committee Members:
Siyang Zheng, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor Nanyin Zhang, Committee Member Pak Kin Wong, Committee Member
Keywords:
Circulating tumor cell Automatic detection Cancer detection Flexible Micro Spring Array
Abstract:
Curing cancer has remained to be quite challenging although significant progresses have been made over the past decades. It has been shown that more than 90% of cancer–related deaths were caused by cancer metastasis, which involves dissemination and spread of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Thus the detection of CTCs has become a predictive cancer prognosis. In view of the extremely low concentration of CTCs in blood, it is imperative to develop a high-efficiency technology for enriching CTCs for cancer prognostic monitoring. With CTCs enrichment technologies, bio-information of CTCs can be acquired, and more precious treatment time for patients can be earned. In this thesis, we design a computer controlled automatic system for point-of-care CTCs enrichment, based on a novel micro-structured membrane filter (flexible micro spring array, FMSA). Compared to manual control, this automatic system not only accelerates enrichment process but also increases experimental reliability and repeatability. Experimental results show that this system can efficiently capture cancer cells spiked into healthy donor blood with high efficiency and was sensitive enough for CTCs detection from patient blood samples.
