Efficient Enrichment Of Circulating Fetal Cells Using A Novel Microfluidic Device

Prenatal testing and diagnosis is an important medical technology for nearly two centuries.This technology can detect fetal genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities.Traditional prenatal testing methods include the use of invasive methods such as amniocentesis to obtain fetal genetic material and the use of serological screening combined with ultrasound imaging for risk assessment.Invasive methods are still the gold standard for prenatal diagnosis,but they are limited in invasiveness,difficulty in sampling,and narrow sampling time window,which may lead to complications such as complications and miscarriage.Non-invasive methods have poor sensitivity and accuracy.The emergence of circulating fetal cells has brought a new dawn for non-invasive prenatal testing and has become the focus of everyone.Circulating fetal cells are the non-invasive prenatal diagnostic objects that are considered to be the most promising non-invasive prenatal diagnosis by carrying out blood exchange into the maternal peripheral blood circulation and carrying intact fetal genetic information.To achieve prenatal diagnosis using circulating fetal cells,enrichment,source identification,and trace gene analysis of circulating fetal cells are required.However,circulating fetal cells are rare in peripheral blood.Therefore,establishing a high-throughput,high-purity circulating fetal cell separation and enrichment method is a key technical problem for circulating fetal cells as a prenatal diagnostic analysis object.In recent years,The microfluidic technology developed has the advantages of high efficiency,high throughput,automation,miniaturization,low cost and visualization,and can realize the capture and separation of rare cells in peripheral blood.In this paper,a high-performance microfluidic cell capture chip based on antibody recognition was constructed,and a new non-invasive prenatal diagnosis method based on microfluidic chip technology was developed to achieve non-invasive and accurate fetal genetic testing.Using the principle of deterministic lateral displacement in fluid mechanics combined with the bioaffinity of antibodies,a microfluidic chip capable of efficiently capturing and separating rare cells such as circulating fetal cells was constructed.According to the size of the target cell to be isolated,the most suitable critical size is designed to make the target cell and the microcolumn collide with each other efficiently.Combined with the specific antibody modified in the microcolumn and the channel,the specific capture of the target cell can be achieved.Reduce non-specific adsorption of non-target cells.The new method of circulating fetal cell capture based on the microfluidic chip has the advantages of high throughput,high efficiency,high specific separation and non-destructive release.Combined with single cell picking and single cell sequencing technology for fetal genetic testing,it is expected to become a new method for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis.