抄録
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are tumor cells shed into bloodstream and would be a primary cause of metastasis to the other organ. Thus, CTCs separation and detection have been actively researched. In the present study, we investigated a concept of two-step dielectrophoresis (ts-DEP) with high separation efficiency for isolating CTCs from other similar-sized cells as a further step of the size-based separation. The developed device showed 98.0 % separation of polystyrene beads by different surface modification. We have also demonstrated 89.8 % separation ratio of SP2/O-HEL from lymphocyte. Dielectric characteristics of 10 kinds of human tumor cells were examined. The results implies a possibility of the discrimination of epithelial and non-epithelial tumor cells.
