A micro Hall chip for circulating microvesicle based cancer monitoring

描述（由申请人提供）：已知肿瘤细胞会将称为循环微泡（C¿Vs）的纳米级物体释放到患者的血液中。这些C¿v已被证明携带来自肿瘤的分子信息，这些信息可能仅通过血液检查就可用于诊断和监测癌症。然而，由于它们的尺寸非常小（d ~ 50 nm），目前还没有临床可行的方法来检测和分析这些C¿v。为了解决这些挑战，我们提出了一种基于微芯片的平台，可以在未处理的全血中直接定量分析C¿Vs。在这个芯片上，我们利用微电子的小特征尺寸，并将其与微流体和磁性纳米颗粒（MNPs）的生物相容性相结合，来测量这些纳米级物体。我们提出的设备是手持式的，旨在将使用传统设备的测量时间从几个小时减少到不到30分钟。此外，由于我们的微磁传感方法的高灵敏度，生物标志物的检测特异性限（100 C¿V/mL）将超过传统技术。这种创新的、临床实用的C¿V检测方法在无创、常规监测疾病进展、药物疗效和转移方面具有巨大的潜力，为患者提供了巨大的好处。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Tumor cells are known to shed nano-scale objects called circulating microvesicles (C¿Vs) into patients' blood. These C¿Vs have been shown to carry molecular information from the tumor, which can potentially be used to diagnose and monitor cancer using only a blood test. However, due to their extremely small size (d ~ 50 nm), there has not been a clinically viable method to detect and profile these C¿Vs. To address these challenges, we propose a microchip-based platform that can quantitatively profile C¿Vs directly in unprocessed whole blood. On this chip, we harness the small feature size of microelectronics and combine it with the biocompatibility of microfluidics and magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) to measure these nano-scale objects. Our proposed device is handheld and aims to reduce measurement times from several hours using conventional equipment to less than thirty minutes. Moreover, due to the high sensitivity of our micro-magnetic sensing method, the biomarker specific limit of detection (100 C¿V/mL) will exceed that of conventional techniques. This innovative, clinically practical approach to C¿V detection has great potential for non-invasive, routine monitoring of disease progression, drug efficacy, and metastasis, offering tremendous benefits for patients.