Cascaded microfluidic circuits for pulsatile filtration of extracellular vesicles from whole blood for early cancer diagnosis
Menée à l'aide de lignées cellulaires et d'échantillons sanguins prélevés sur des patientes atteintes d'un cancer du sein non métastatique de stade précoce, cette étude met en évidence l'intérêt d'un système microfluidique pour isoler des vésicules extracellulaires issues de tumeurs et diagnostiquer la maladie
Tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) hold the potential to substantially improve noninvasive early diagnosis of cancer. However, analysis of nanosized EVs in blood samples has been hampered by lack of effective, rapid, and standardized methods for isolating and detecting EVs. To address this difficulty, here we use the electric-hydraulic analogy to design cascaded microfluidic circuits for pulsatile filtration of EVs via integration of a cell-removal circuit and an EV-isolation circuit. The microfluidic device is solely driven by a pneumatic clock pulse generator, allowing for preprogrammed, clog-free, gentle, high-yield, and high-purity isolation of EVs directly from blood within 30 minutes. We demonstrate its clinical utility by detecting protein markers of isolated EVs from patient blood using a polyethylene glycol–enhanced thermophoretic aptasensor, with 91% accuracy for diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer. The cascaded microfluidic circuits can have broad applications in the field of EV research. Cascaded microfluidic circuits enable pulsatile filtration of EVs with high yield and purity.
Science Advances , article en libre accès, 2022