Technology of cell size separation based on vibration-induced flow

Abstract

There are high demands of cell size separation in medical or biological fields. For example, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are extremely rare in whole blood. However, CTCs have important information for cancer treatment. Therefore, separation technologies of cells are very important.One of the most popular separation technologies are based on size separation, because CTCs are larger than red blood cells. Conventional methods of size separation are proposed using microfluidics chips. However, most of conventional methods have to connect tube with microfluidics chips. Therefore, in the connected parts, some cells are clogged at the parts.In this study, we propose new size separation method based on vibration-induced flow that has no connection of tubes. Vibration-induced flow is occurred around micropillar by applying vibration to the micropillar. Vibration is applied by piezo actuator on the bottom of device. In this method, flow is generated by using piezo actuator and pumps are not needed. Thus, we succeeded in separation without connection tubes. Therefore, we succeeded to separate cells based on their size without clogging.