A Universal Monoclonal Antibody-Aptamer Conjugation Strategy for Selective Non-Invasive Bioparticle Isolation from Blood Using A Regenerative Microfluidic Platform
Simultaneous isolation of various circulating tumor cell (CTC) subtypes from whole blood is useful in cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Microfluidic chip technology shows great promise in CTC separation because of its high throughput capacity, portability, and automatability. However, current affinity agents, such as antibodies and aptamers alone, are still suboptimal for efficient, consistent, and versatile cell analysis and are thus not yet widely adopted in clinical applications. By introducing a novel affinity agent aptamer-antibody (Apt-mAb) conjugate for surface functionalization, we developed a universal and regenerative microchip with excellent efficiency and non-invasiveness in the separation and profiling of various CTCs from blood. The new affinity agent and the universal microchip platform may be widely useful for various bio-particle separations in different biological matrices. Further, the excellent reusability of the microchip not only improves data consistency for multiple uses but also minimizes plastic waste production and promotes environmental sustainability.