A lab-on-a-chip for characterising and sorting cancer cells

目前，在英国，每三分钟就有一人死于癌症，或每天超过440人，或每年超过16.2万人。预计新的癌症病例将从2007年的每年29.8万例增加到2030年的43.2万例--仅在英国就增加了45%。这一增长几乎完全是由预期的英国人口增长和人口老龄化造成的。与癌症相关的死亡的主要原因是肿瘤转移。在它们生长的某个时刻，实体肿瘤开始将肿瘤细胞释放到血液中。这些细胞被称为循环肿瘤细胞(CTCs)，它们被认为是通过血流传播到转移部位的种子。CTC也被视为替代品，允许医生确定治疗过程并观察癌症的演变。CTCs表现出相当大的标记物表达异质性，这已被认为是系统治疗耐药的一种机制。该项目旨在通过开发集成了微波、超声波和微流控技术的下一代芯片实验室来揭示单个CTCs的特征，该芯片实验室将表征单个CTCs并为后续分析提供实时且无标记的信息。芯片实验室将测量单个CTCs的介电性质，允许与细胞形态、增殖、新陈代谢、细胞骨架、活力和细胞质相关联。该项目将开发一种混合设备，以促进监测癌症的进展和治疗效果，并揭示CTCs的组成，以解决特定的突变和表型变化，这将作为了解CTCs在转移中的行为的第一步。

At present, more than one person dies from cancer every three minutes in the UK, or more than 440 per day, or more than 162,000 per annum. The projection of new cancer cases rises from about 298,000 per annum in 2007, to 432,000 by 2030 - an increase of 45% in the UK alone. The rise is explained almost entirely by the expected increase in the number of people living in the UK and the ageing population.The dominant cause of cancer-associated mortality is tumour metastasis. At some point in their growth, solid tumours start to shed tumour cells into the bloodstream. These cells are called circulating tumour cells (CTCs), which have been considered as seeds spreading through the bloodstream to metastatic sites. CTCs are also treated as surrogates allowing doctors to determine the course of therapy and watch how a cancer evolves. CTCs express considerable marker expression heterogeneity which has been recently recognised as a mechanism of resistance to systematic therapy. This project aims to reveal the characterisation of single CTCs by developing next generation lab-on-a-chip integrating microwave, ultrasonic and microfluidic technologies, which will characterise single CTCs and provide their real-time and label-free information for subsequent analyses.The lab-on-a-chip will measure the dielectric properties of single CTCs, allowing the association to cellular morphology, proliferation, metabolism, cytoskeleton, viability, and cytoplasm. This project will develop a hybrid device to facilitate monitoring the cancer progression and treatment effectiveness, and reveal the makeup of CTCs to address specific mutations and phenotypic alterations, which will act as the first step to understand CTCs' behaviours in metastasis.