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Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have tremendous potential to indicate disease progression and monitor therapeutic response using minimally invasive approaches. Considering the limitations of affinity strategies based on their cost, effectiveness, and simplicity, size-based enrichment methods that involve low-cost, label-free, and relatively simple protocols have been further promoted. Nevertheless, the key challenges of these methods are clogging issues and cell aggregation, which reduce the recovery rates and purity. Inspired by the natural phenomenon that the airflow around a windmill is disturbed, in this study, a windmill-like hole array on the SU-8 membrane was designed to perturb the fluid such that cells in a fluid would be able to self-mix and that the pressure acting on cells or the membrane would be dispersed to allow a greater velocity. In addition, based on the advantages of fluid coatings, a lipid coating was used to modify the membrane surface to prevent cell aggregation and clogging of the holes. Under the optimal conditions, recovery rates of 93% and 90% were found for A549 and HeLa cells in a clinical simulation test of our platform with a CTC concentration of 20–100 cells per milliliter of blood. The white blood cell (WBC) depletion rate was 98.7% ( n  = 15), and the CTC detection limit was less than 10 cells per milliliter of blood ( n  = 6). Moreover, compared with conventional membrane filtration, the advantages of the proposed device for the rapid (2 mL/min) and efficient enrichment of CTCs without clogging were shown both experimentally and theoretically. Due to its advantages in the efficient, rapid, uniform, and clog-free enrichment of CTCs, our platform offers great potential for metastatic detection and therapy analyses.

Integrated microdevice with a windmill-like hole array for the clog-free, efficient, and self-mixing enrichment of circulating tumor cells