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

用于早期癌症诊断的超声波片上系统

• 批准号: 1943656
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1943656
• 关键词: Ultrasonic; System; chip; Early; Cancer

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.

当原发肿瘤从最初开始的地方扩散到身体的另一个地方时，癌症就会危及生命。扩散过程称为转移，癌细胞扩散形成的肿瘤称为转移性肿瘤。转移是侵袭性癌症患者死亡的主要原因。转移机制已被深入研究，但尚未完全了解。据报道，肿瘤细胞从原发肿瘤转移到血液中，即循环肿瘤细胞（循环肿瘤细胞），是肿瘤转移的种子。对ctc群体、血液分离、基因分型和表型的研究是了解转移生物学的关键。ctc极为罕见，即使在转移性癌症患者中也是如此（大约10亿个正常血细胞中只有一个），而且它们的分离很大程度上受到技术限制。该项目将开发一种超声波片上系统（USC），用于根据ctc的尺寸、密度和可压缩性等机械特性从血液样本中分离ctc。本文将研究USC的参数数值模拟，以设计最佳的器件几何形状、灵敏度和吞吐量，以推进当前基于声学的传感器在微粒分离中的应用。USC应该能够处理极低浓度的ctc，因为它们仅在1毫升血液样本中发现几个，但足以在癌症患者中播撒继发性肿瘤。为了实现USC在临床应用中的实施，ctc的预期回收率超过90%。利用超声波技术制造微系统将参与本项目，以开发芯片上的超声波系统。将进行临床样本的初步研究，以提供作为癌症研究，特别是早期癌症诊断和药物疗效评估的宝贵补充工具的潜力。