Functional magnetic nanoparticles for circulating tumor cells screening in integrated microfluidic system

Screening and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can potentially provide crucial information for clinical prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer metastasis. Herein we designed various functional magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) to capture CTCs, with further optimization towards rare cell separation with high specificity from the whole blood. In Vitro characterizations were carried out using an integrated microfluidic system coupled with the immunomagnetic assays on-chip towards efficient screening of CTCs in blood samples with high sensitivity.