Sharif Digital Repository

According to statistics in 2012, around 14 million people worldwide have cancer, and 8 million have died that year, according to estimates, this number will increase to 21 millions new cancer case and 13 million mortality in 2030. Despite years of research on cancer, many questions about the mechanism of the spread of cancer in the body remain unanswered so far. The proposed models identify that the cells isolated from the primary tumor and transmit them to the circulatory system in the form of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) or in the form of clusters as responsible for the incidence of cancer. This process is called metastasis. Recent studies have reported the high potential of metastasis... 

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancer cells which shed from the primary tumor, enter circulation and spread cancer all over the body. CTCs give valuable information about cancer and can help diagnosis and prognosis. Hence separating and isolating CTCs from blood is a necessity for cancer therapeutics. CTCs are separated from blood cells by their different physical or biochemical properties. Many groups have attempted different methods for separation of CTCs. Inertial microfluidics is one of the newest approaches in CTC separation technologies which separates CTCs based on their size. Current inertial microfluidic systems containing straight, spiral, serpentine and contraction expansion... 

The process of separating cells from a laboratory sample, is a crucial step in biotechnology and medical science. Cells separation is important for various reasons, including the identification and treatment of diseases, as an example, separation of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) from patient blood sample. CTCs are cells that shed from a tumor and diffuse into blood vessels. These cells are the starters of metastasis, the process in which cancer spreads in body, and are main reason of deaths caused by cancer. Extremely low percentages of target cells in the blood, clarify the importance of highly accurate and sensitive separation. Currently, conventional separation methods are of macro-order... 

Cancer is a major cause of mortality worldwide, with a disease burden estimated to grow over the coming decades. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cancer cells released from the primary or metastatic tumors and transported though the peripheral circulatory system to their specific secondary locations. The presence of CTCs in a cancer patient’s blood has been used as a prognostic biomarker, with lower CTC count correlating with greater overall survival. In spite of its clinical potential, the isolation and detection of CTCs has been a challenging task due to its rare presence amongst other blood cells (as low as 1–10 CTCs per billions of blood cells) and variability in terms of both... 

Nowadays cancer is the second major cause of death in the world after cardiovascular diseases and scientists and researchers are making considerable efforts to fight it. Detection and isolation of circulating tumor cells in the blood is of paramount importance as it can be further used to measure the disease severity as well as efficacy of chemical drugs. Magnetophoresis has attracted researchers because of its simplicity, high effectiveness and non-invasiveness. Microfluidic systems have a high potential for implementing conventional biological methods in a microscale for detection, separation and incubation of CTCs, and they also lead to reduction in costs and required samples. Prior to... 

Separating cells from a mixed sample is a required task in biotechnology and modern medicine, for example to isolate CTC’s that are of interest for doing therapy and diagnosing or doing research. A minute percentage of target cells must be separated from a large amount of unwanted cells. These target cells like CTC’s could be as rare as 1 target cell per millions of unwanted background cells. Hence Microfluidic cell sorting schemes based upon fluorescent labelling, electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis and magnetophoresis have been devised. Microfluidic magnetically-activated cell sorting (MACS) does not need any optical instrument or current source and electrode. By using an electromagnet or... 

In this project, two centrifugal microfluidic platforms with the goal of separation and genetical study of circulating tumor cells have been designed, simulated and fabricated. Circulating tumor cells are the ones that are detached from the cancer tumors, entered the blood and disseminated the danger of cancer through other parts of the body. Both passive and active methods of separation are investigated in this study. The passive method is based on the inertial effects of the fluid and the active method is based on the magnetophoretic force exerted from an external magnetic field. In order to use the active method, the magnetic nanoparticles are attached to the breast cancer cells by the... 

Cancer diagnosis area has recently been in the limelight of the medical research and there exist an unremitting focus on the devices & technologies which enable cancer detection in its victims. Lately a genius diagnostic method based on isolation and entrapment of circulating tumor cells has been developed which pave the path for cancer identification. These circulating cells which are detached from the primary tumor are carried out through body by means of circulation system. They play key role in phenomenon called metastasis. Separating these rare cells from multifarious background blood cells, assessing their quantity can supply valuable information on the stage of disease as well as its... 

Polymerase chain reaction, abbreviated as PCR, is a method of amplifying the number of copies of a desired DNA sequence through special protocols. The rapid advance of microfluidic devices and the emerging concept of digital microfluidics has resulted into the development of digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) systems with their significant uses in the detection of rare mutations, cancer diagnosis, and surveillance. In this study, an integrated ddPCR microfluidic chip alongside its thermoelectric thermal cycler and optical analysis systems have been designed, fabricated and their performance has been tested and evaluated. It was shown that the effect of master mold’s surface quality, the material of... 

According to studies, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world and millions of people die from this disease every year. Early diagnosis is one of the most important factors in controlling and treating the disease. The ability of circulating tumor cells to diagnose and monitor the disease has led many researchers to focus on studying and researching these cells in recent years. However, due to the fact that the concentration of this type of cells in the blood is very low, their isolation is associated with challenges. Various methods isolate CTCs based on physical, biological and other differences in characteristics. In this study, we investigate performance of a microfluidic... 

Cancer is the second leading cause of death among humans as one of the major human concerns. More than 500,000 people die of cancer each year in the United States alone. Cancer mortality is mainly due to cancer metastasis. Metastasis is the escape of cancer cells from a primary tumor, the circulation of cells in the circulatory system (CTSs), the penetration of/from vessel wall, and the formation of a secondary tumor. It is still not clear how the cells survive in the circulatory system, along with the mechanical pressures and stresses that exist in the body's capillary channals. In this study, a microcirculation model for circulating cells with barriers was designed and constructed by the... 

Cancer is an abnormal growth of cells which is one of the major cause of worldwide’s mortality. Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are rare cancer cells released from the primary or metastatic tumors and transported though the peripheral circulatory system and spreads in body and seize healthy organs. Early detection of CTCs can help in overtaking the cancer, hence isolation of CTCs is an essential step for many therapeutics. In spite of its clinical potential, the isolation and detection of CTCs has been a challenging task due to its rare presence amongst other blood cells (as low as 1–10 CTCs per billions of blood cells), similarity to white blood cell in size and also variability in terms of... 

Isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) found in blood samples of cancer patients have been considered as a reliable source for cancer prognosis and diagnosis. A new continuous microfluidic platform has been designed in this investigation for simultaneous capture and characterization of CTCs based on their deformability. The deformability-based chip (D-Chip) consists of two sections of separation and characterization where slanted weirs with a gap of 7 μm were considered. Although sometimes CTCs and leukocytes have the same size, the deformability differs in such a way that can be exploited for enrichment purposes. MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines were used for the... 

Nowadays, cancer, which has been mentioned as the disease of the century, is the second leading cause of death throughout the world, and its incidence is constantly increasing. Isolation of circulating tumor cells is one of the most critical steps in diagnosing and controlling cancer progression. Due to the rarity of cancer cells compared to other cells in the blood sample, the isolation process requires optimal and high-precision devices. With the advent of inertial microfluidics, the ability to control the particles movement, the processing of blood samples as quickly and accurately as possible, and the viability of cells with a high percentage, introduced microfluidic systems as a... 

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world, with a high annual cost of treatment. As the cancer progresses, the cancer cells in the bloodstream metastasize to other parts of the body, causing the disease to spread throughout the patient's body and disrupt organ functions. sepration of cancer cells in the bloodstream inhibits the growth of cancer. Cancer cells differ from healthy cells in some features, such as size, electrical charge and polarization. These features can be used to seprate cancer cells from healthy cells.In this study, cell surface electrical charge was used as a biomarker to seprate cancer cells. By passing blood flow through a chanal and applying an electrical...