Microfluidic magnetic cell sorting system for cancer diagnosis

This project is aimed at developing a new integrated microfluidic system for high throughput cell sorting and analysis. This micro-device will be able to sort rare cells, like circulating tumour cells in whole blood, and analyse them by bright field and fluorescence microscopy at high magnification. The sample flows through an array of magnetic columns that are coated with antibodies. These antibodies are specific of membrane protein that are expressed by the target cells and allow their capture in chip. Once they are trapped on columns, their shape and the expression of other proteins are observed by microscopy.