An Ultrasonic System-on-a-chip for Early Cancer Diagnosis

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A cancer becomes life-threatening when the primary tumour spreads from the place where it first started to another place in the body. The spreading process is called metastasis, a tumor formed by spreading cancer cells is called a metastatic tumor. Metastasis is the principal cause of death in patients diagnosed with invasive cancer. The metastatic mechanism has been intensively researched but not fully understood. It has been reported that tumour cells shed by the primary tumour to blood stream, namely circulating tumour cells (CTCs), are the seeds for cancer metastasis. Research on CTCs such as their population, isolation from the blood, genotyping, and phenotyping holds the key to understanding the biology of metastasis. CTCs are extremely rare, even in patients with metastatic cancer (approximately one count among a billion normal blood cells), and their isolation is greatly subject to technological constraints. This project will develop an ultrasonic system-on-a-chip (USC) for separating CTCs from blood samples based on CTCs' mechanical properties such as size, density, and compressibility. Parametric numerical simulations of the USC will be investigated to design optimum device geometry, sensitivity, and throughput in order to advance the current application of acoustic-based sensor in microparticle separation. The USC should be able to manipulate extremely low concentration of CTCs as they are found only several in 1-mL blood sample but sufficient for seeding secondary tumour in a cancer patient. The expected recovery rate of CTCs is more than 90% in order to realise the implementation of the USC in clinical applications. Microsystem fabrication with ultrasound techniques will be involved in this project to develop the Ultrasonic System on a Chip. Preliminary studies of clinical samples will take place to offer the potential to serve as invaluable supplemental tool in cancer research, especially in early cancer diagnosis and drug efficacy assessment.