Capture of circulating tumor cells with superhydrophilic silicon dioxide nano pillar structure without capture antibodies

This paper reports a simple, yet effective method for capturing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) without using any capture antibodies. A simple way to fabricate silicon dioxide nano pillar structure with superhydrophilic properties has been developed. We demonstrate that our fabricated structure could efficiently capture cancer cells (A549 and H1975) without using any capture antibodies. Our results show that the silicon dioxide nano pillar structure enhances CTCs capture yield up to 65% within 4h of cell incubation.