Guest Editors
Yixing Gou, Department of Measurement and Control, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, China
Summary
Liquid biopsy techniques, which are minimally invasive and enable real-time detection, have garnered significant attention in recent years. These techniques play a crucial role in cancer diagnosis, treatment, early screening, and prognostic analysis. Specifically, the extraction of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) through liquid biopsy has emerged as a pivotal milestone in clinical trials. Despite their significance in cancer detection and diagnosis, the number of CTCs in peripheral blood is extremely low. Early-stage cancer patients typically have 1-10 CTCs/mL, while advanced-stage patients may have a few hundred CTCs/mL, in stark contrast to the billions of blood cells/mL. Therefore, efficient screening of CTCs in peripheral blood is imperative.
The field of microfluidics has experienced rapid advancements in recent decades, transitioning from molecular analysis to cell biology. This progress can be attributed to the ability of microfluidic devices to precisely control the mechanical, biological, and fluidic environment at the molecular and cellular levels. Cell sorting on microchips offers numerous advantages over conventional methods, including reduced equipment size, elimination of potentially biohazardous procedures, and simplification of complex protocols associated with cell sorting. Furthermore, microchip devices are well-suited for parallelization, enabling comprehensive lab-on-a-chip systems to be employed for cell isolation, analysis, and experimental processing.
This research topic welcomes the submission of cell screening and analysis based on microfluidic system. The original articles and reviews focused on, but not limited to the following topics:
(1) The latest research on microfluidics-based active cell screening, including but not limited to electric screening, magnetic screening, acoustic screening, and optical tweezer screening.
(2) The latest research on microfluidics-based passive cell screening, including but not limited to microfiltration screening, deterministic lateral displacement screening, and inertial screening.
(3) The clinical performance comparison between liquid biopsy based on microfluidics and routine tissue biopsy.
(4) Reviews on the advantages and limitations of the cell screening technology based on microfluidics.
Keywords
microfluidics, liquid biopsy, cell screening, cell analysis, biomarker, POCT
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