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Queer refugees are misfits in the global political economy of migration. While international human rights law has provided some room for queer acceptance, queer refugees face organised abandonment—marginality, erasure, and invisibility—as they attempt to survive in the face of ongoing displacement. This paper explores queer refugee survival in Nairobi, Cape Town, and Paris, and examines the netted practices of the state, non‐state actors, and civil society embedded in a landscape of heteronormativity and anti‐migrant sentiment. In so doing, this paper emphasises queerness as a form of precarity inseparable from the overarching violence of race, class, and capital. With this critique in mind, queer refugee survival is constrained by the lack of access to shelter, community, and work‐related social reproduction. In short, queer refugees face deeper marginality than their cis‐gendered and heterosexual counterparts as they attempt to survive in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exploratory article, we aim to open a research agenda for renewed attention to the relationship between the capitalist state and the technology ecosystem. Over the last decade, private technology companies have increasingly become enmeshed with the activities of the state in arenas such as policing, healthcare, and welfare administration. At a time when so many facets of state activity are being infiltrated by technology firms and their products, we ask how we should theorise the relationship between the capitalist state and technology capital? This paper develops one approach to answer this question by aligning the priorities of tech capital with those of the neoliberal state namely, through the disciplining and managing of the relative surplus population. In this arena, we argue, a form of techfare has begun to take shape: a technology-assisted extension and intensification of the disciplinary logics that work to lock the relative surplus population into exploitative market relations and punitive institutions in advanced capitalist countries like the United States. We explore techfare and the disciplining of labour through two avenues: the business of consumer finance vis-à-vis debt and credit instruments, and various forms of tech-enabled strategies of law-enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced displacement – the involuntary movement of people from their homes and livelihoods – has captured public attention through diverging discourses of humanitarianism and global xenophobia. 2.5 million asylum claims were lodged in the European Union (EU) in 2015–16 leading to national and region-wide strategies of border securitization. Refugee governance in the EU is marked by contradictory ideological positions where liberal humanitarianism, through refugee acceptance, dovetails with racial violence evidenced by ongoing detention and circuitous displacement. These divergent positions, and their resultant policies of refugee management, avoid the social reality of neoliberalisation as it pertains to widespread homelessness and work-related insecurity in major EU cities such as Paris. This disavowal occurs in a raced market and impedes the survival of refugees through insistence on self-reliance – a disciplinary logic endemic to neoliberalism and imposed on refugees upon relocation. I argue that self-reliance transforms refugees into disposable subjects in capitalism at various stages of the asylum process from escape and detention to relocation and ongoing displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya was amongst the first countries in the world to undergo structural adjustment programmes in 1980 leading to welfare retrenchment and the lack of social safety nets for many of its urban poor. This article shows how refugee hosting in Kenya has coincided with ongoing statewide neoliberalisation. With lack of state-led welfare support, and diminished global aid for a nearly three-decade long encampment in Dadaab and Kakuma, refugees have no choice but to turn to the private sector for shelter aid through microcredit loans especially in major urban centres. This article shows how neoliberal policies dovetail with refugee governance in Kenya by examining the deployment of financial inclusion strategies on multiple scales. Drawing upon fieldwork in 2018, I argue that refugee assistance intersects with the needs of private capital where refugees, due to their social marginality, are prone to experimentation in terms of financial inclusion. Housing microfinance, an ineffective guarantor of long-term refugee shelter, and new technologies of financial inclusion exemplify neoliberal experimentation and illustrate how these strategies fail to ensure the long-term survival of refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fintech and digital financial services involve the delivery of financial products and services through technology. Fintech companies are part of a financial lending infrastructure claiming to offer an alternative to 'big banks', and are often touted as digitally disruptive technology that is rapidly reshaping financial inclusion agendas and improving the lives of the poor. For many refugees living in camps and informal settlements in Kenya, fintech is often the only viable option for credit or microfinance aid. While refugees are often excluded from credit, the spread of fintech as a solution for direct peer-to-peer aid transfers from the Global North to refugees has resulted in the uneven distribution of credit access and livelihood support. Through fintech, private citizens and groups in the Global North are able to disrupt and subvert refugee assistance, deeming some worthy of aid while others face ongoing exclusion. While fintech remains a hopeful source of greater efficiency and empowerment, the direct transfer of aid money masks profit and corporate power by only extending assistance to those refugees who are appropriately entrepreneurial, that is to say those who will start small businesses and pay back their loans. This paper argues that processes of financial inclusion carried out by and through fintech are still distinguished largely by exclusion. In so doing, this paper highlights a theoretical position that refugee governance is embedded in racial forms of capital accumulation and expropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya currently hosts around half a million refugees in two of the world's largest refugee camps in Dadaab and Kakuma. While these camps have held refugees for nearly three decades, they face ongoing threats of closure resulting in an uptick of urban refugees in Nairobi. This article places refugees in the context of urban disposability and hinges this concept on three interrelated aspects: citizenship, housing, and income-based survival against the backdrop of neoliberalisation in Kenya. Lack of state support and widespread xenophobia on the national scale has led to piecemeal market-based policies of self-reliance such as microfinance and entrepreneurship as institution-led strategies for survival. These solutions forego refugee life in favour of capital accumulation creating unsustainable indebtedness and poverty on the urban scale. I argue that urban refugees are rendered disposable populations and are forced to survive through informal structures within Kenyan neoliberalism. In doing this, refugees are not passively wasted populations, rather, they are brought into the folds of capital accumulation through modes of survival based on self-reliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to theorize queer necropolitics—the ability for states to decide who lives and who dies—within the context of forced displacement. In doing so, I link the literature on African sexualities, necropolitics, and queer migration and ask the following questions: How do African states engage in necropolitics that fuel forced displacement for queer people? And, how do forcibly displaced queer migrants navigate and survive in heteronormative spaces within the wider context of racialization in Cape Town? I argue that forcibly displaced queer migrants face ongoing forms of displacement based on various dimensions of 'non-belonging' from country-of-origin to relocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on refugees in authoritarian neoliberalism and necessity to follow international norms of refugee resettlement to accept the exodus of migrants and problem that threatens European sovereignty and security. It also mentions embrace of marketized social housing provisioning and difficult to meet the growing demands for affordable rental housing. It also mentions place-based practices of neoliberalization that have facilitated increasing levels of housing insecurity.

Blood is a highly complex bio-fluid with cellular components making up >40% of the total volume, thus making its analysis challenging and time-consuming. In this work, we introduce a high-throughput size-based separation method for processing diluted blood using inertial microfluidics. The technique takes advantage of the preferential cell focusing in high aspect-ratio microchannels coupled with pinched flow dynamics for isolating low abundance cells from blood. As an application of the developed technique, we demonstrate the isolation of cancer cells (circulating tumor cells (CTCs)) spiked in blood by exploiting the difference in size between CTCs and hematologic cells. The microchannel dimensions and processing parameters were optimized to enable high throughput and high resolution separation, comparable to existing CTC isolation technologies. Results from experiments conducted with MCF-7 cells spiked into whole blood indicate >80% cell recovery with an impressive 3.25 × 105fold enrichment over red blood cells (RBCs) and 1.2 × 104fold enrichment over peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL). In spite of a 20× sample dilution, the fast operating flow rate allows the processing of ∼108cells min−1through a single microfluidic device. The device design can be easily customized for isolating other rare cells from blood including peripheral blood leukocytes and fetal nucleated red blood cells by simply varying the ‘pinching’ width. The advantage of simple label-free separation, combined with the ability to retrieve viable cells post enrichment and minimal sample pre-processing presents numerous applications for use in clinical diagnosis and conducting fundamental studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for efficient cell separation, an essential preparatory step in many biological and medical assays, has led to the recent development of numerous microscale separation techniques. This review describes the current state-of-the-art in microfluidics-based cell separation techniques. Microfluidics-based sorting offers numerous advantages, including reducing sample volumes, faster sample processing, high sensitivity and spatial resolution, low device cost, and increased portability. The techniques presented are broadly classified as being active or passive depending on the operating principles. The various separation principles are explained in detail along with popular examples demonstrating their application toward cell separation. Common separation metrics, including separation markers, resolution, efficiency, and throughput, of these techniques are discussed. Developing efficient microscale separation methods that offering greater control over cell population distribution will be important in realizing true point-of-care (POC) lab-on-a-chip (LOC) systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we introduce a novel method for enhanced particle filtration using shear-modulated inertial migration in straight microchannels. Depending on their size, inertial lift causes particles to migrate toward microchannel walls. Using microchannels with high aspect ratio cross sections, the fluidic shear can be modulated, resulting in preferential equilibration of particles along the longer microchannel walls. Due to large lift forces generated in these high aspect ratio channels, complete particle filtration can be achieved in short distances even at low flow rates (Re<50). Based on this principle, we use a straight microfluidic channel with a rectangular cross section to passively and continuously filter 1.9 μm polystyrene particles. Overall, the proposed technique is versatile and can be easily integrated with on-chip microfluidic systems for filtration of a wide range of particle sizes, from micro- to nanoparticles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a new and simple method of patterning polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) directly using benzophenone as a photoinitiator. The photodefinable PDMS mixture (photoPDMS) is positive-acting and only sensitive to light below 365 nm, permitting processing under normal ambient light. Features of the order of 100 µm, which are sufficiently small for most microfluidic applications, were successfully fabricated using this novel process. A parametric study of process parameters was performed to optimize the fabrication. As a demonstration, microfluidic channels of varying dimensions were successfully fabricated using this process and experimentally characterized using fluorescence microscopy. To further demonstrate photoPDMS potential, thin (<30 µm) free-standing films with through patterns were fabricated and successfully used as shadow masks. The photoPDMS process completely eliminates the need for a master, permits processing under normal ambient light conditions, and makes fabrication fast and simple. This process for rapid prototyping of low-cost, disposable LOCs can be accomplished without cleanroom facilities and thus can be employed for a wide range of applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PURPOSE: Androgen receptor splice variant 7 (ARV-7) is a resistance mechanism to hormonal therapy in metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). It has been associated with poor outcomes. On progression to castrate resistance, ARV-7 positivity has been identified in global populations at an incidence of 17.8%-28.8%. Here, we characterize the incidence of ARV-7 positivity in Asian patients with mCRPC in a prospective fashion and evaluate its implications on treatment outcomes. METHODS: Patients with mCRPC from multiple centers in Southeast and East Asia were enrolled in a prospective manner before initiation of androgen receptor signaling inhibitors or docetaxel. ARV-7 status was evaluated at baseline with three commercially available assays: AdnaTest Prostate Cancer platform, Clearbridge method, and IBN method. Clinical outcomes at progression were assessed. The primary end point of this study was prevalence of ARV-7 positivity; secondary end points were incidence of ARV-7 positivity, prostate specific antigen (PSA) response rate, PSA progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS). RESULTS: A total of 102 patients with a median age of 72 years at enrollment participated. Overall, an incidence of ARV-7 positivity of between 14.3% and 33.7% in Asian patients with mCRPC was demonstrated depending on the assay used. Patients found to have ARV-7 positivity at enrollment had a numerically worse PSA PFS compared with ARV-7 negative patients. CONCLUSION: In this study, the incidence of ARV-7 positivity in Asian patients with mCRPC was shown to be similar to the global population. Patients with ARV-7 positivity appear to have more aggressive disease with numerically worse PSA PFS and OS. Further prospective studies are needed to fully characterize the relationship that ARV-7 positivity has on prognosis of Asian patients with mCRPC. AR-V7 expression is correlated with clinical outcomes post-treatment in large multicenter Asian mCRPC patient study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work introduces Spiromni, a single device incorporating three different pressurised metered-dose inhaler (pMDI) accessories: a pMDI spacer, an electronic monitoring device (EMD), and a spirometer. While there are devices made to individually address the issues of technique, adherence and monitoring, respectively, for asthma patients as laid out in the Global Initiative for Asthma's (GINA) global strategy for asthma management and prevention, Spiromni was designed to address all three issues using a single, combination device. Spiromni addresses the key challenge of measuring both inhalation and exhalation profiles, which are different by an order of magnitude. Moreover, the innovative design prevents exhalation from entering the spacer chamber and prevents medication loss during inhalation using umbrella valves without a loss in flow velocity. Apart from recording the peak exhalation flow rate, data from the sensors allow us to extract other key lung volume and capacities measures similar to a medical pulmonary function test. We believe this low-cost portable multi-functional device will benefit both asthma patients and clinicians in the management of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, a lightweight compliant glove that detects scratching using data from microtubular stretchable sensors on each finger and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) on the palm through a machine learning model is presented: the SensorIsed Glove for Monitoring Atopic Dermatitis (SIGMA). SIGMA provides the user and clinicians with a quantifiable way of assaying scratch as a proxy to itch. With the quantitative information detailing scratching frequency and duration, the clinicians would be able to better classify the severity of itch and scratching caused by atopic dermatitis (AD) more objectively to optimise treatment for the patients, as opposed to the current subjective methods of assessments that are currently in use in hospitals and research settings. The validation data demonstrated an accuracy of 83% of the scratch prediction algorithm, while a separate 30 min validation trial had an accuracy of 99% in a controlled environment. In a pilot study with children (n = 6), SIGMA accurately detected 94.4% of scratching when the glove was donned. We believe that this simple device will empower dermatologists to more effectively measure and quantify itching and scratching in AD, and guide personalised treatment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifiable erectile dysfunction (ED) diagnosis involves the monitoring of rigidity and tumescence of the penile shaft during nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT). In this work, we introduce Erectile Dysfunction SENsor (EDSEN), a home-based wearable device for quantitative penile health monitoring based on stretchable microtubular sensing technology. Two types of sensors, the T- and R-sensors, are developed to effectively measure penile tumescence and rigidity, respectively. Conical models mimicking penile shaft were fabricated with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material, using different base to curing agent ratios to replicate the different hardness properties of a penile shaft. A theoretical buckling force chart for the different penile models is generated to determine sufficiency criteria for sexual intercourse. An average erect penile length and circumference requires at least a Young's modulus of 179 kPa for optimal buckling force required for satisfactory sexual intercourse. The conical penile models were evaluated using EDSEN. Our results verified that the circumference of a penile shaft can be accurately measured by T-sensor and rigidity using the R-sensor. EDSEN provides a private and quantitative method to detect ED within the comfortable confines of the user's home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug selection and treatment monitoring via minimally invasive liquid biopsy using circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are expected to be realized in the near future. For clinical applications of CTCs, simple, high-throughput, single-step CTC isolation from whole blood without red blood cell (RBC) lysis and centrifugation remains a crucial challenge. In this study, we developed a novel cancer cell separation chip, "hybrid double-spiral chip", that involves the serial combination of two different Dean flow fractionation (DFF) separation modes of half and full Dean cycles, which is the hybrid DFF separation mode for ultra-high-throughput blood processing at high precision and size-resolution separation. The chip allows fast processing of 5 mL whole blood within 30 min without RBC lysis and centrifugation. RBC and white blood cell (WBC) depletion rates of over 99.9% and 99%, respectively, were achieved. The average recovery rate of spiked A549 cancer cells was 87% with as low as 200 cells in 5 mL blood. The device can achieve serial reduction in the number of cells from approximately 1010 cells of whole blood to 108 cells, and subsequently to an order of 106 cells. The developed method can be combined with measurements of all recovered cells using imaging flow cytometry. As proof of concept, CTCs were successfully enriched and enumerated from the blood of metastatic breast cancer patients (N = 10, 1–69 CTCs per 5 mL) and metastatic prostate cancer patients (N = 10, 1–39 CTCs per 5 mL). We believe that the developed method will be beneficial for automated clinical analysis of rare CTCs from whole blood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droplet-based microfluidics has shown potential in high throughput single cell assays by encapsulating individual cells in water-in-oil emulsions. Ordering cells in a micro-channel is necessary to encapsulate individual cells into droplets further enhancing the assay efficiency. This is typically limited due to the difficulty of preparing high-density cell solutions and maintaining them without cell aggregation in long channels (>5 cm). In this study, we developed a short pinched flow channel (5 mm) to separate cell aggregates and to form a uniform cell distribution in a droplet-generating platform that encapsulated single cells with >55% encapsulation efficiency beating Poisson encapsulation statistics. Using this platform and commercially available Sox substrates (8-hydroxy-5-(N,N-dimethylsulfonamido)-2- methylquinoline), we have demonstrated a high throughput dynamic single cell signaling assay to measure the activity of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) in lung cancer cells triggered by cell surface ligand binding. The phosphorylation of the substrates resulted in fluorescent emission, showing a sigmoidal increase over a 12 h period. The result exhibited a heterogeneous signaling rate in individual cells and showed various levels of drug resistance when treated with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor, gefitinib. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We aimed to study the prevalence of CTCs in breast cancer (BC) patients undergoing neoadjuvant or palliative therapy with a label-free microfluidic platform (ClearCell FX), and its prognostic relevance in metastatic BC (mBC). Materials and methods: Peripheral blood samples were collected from 108 BC patients before starting a new line of treatment (“baseline”), majority of whom had mBC (76/108; 70.4%). CTCs were retrieved by dean flow fractionation that enriched for larger cells, and enumerated using immunofluorescence-based staining. Progression-free survival (PFS) in mBC patients was analysed using Kaplan-Meier method; cox proportional hazard models were used for univariable and multivariable analyses. Results: The detection rate of CTCs before starting a new line of treatment was 75.9% (n = 108; median: 8 CTCs/7.5 ml blood) at a cut off of ≥2 CTCs. PFS was inferior for mBC patients with baseline CTC count ≥5 CTCs/7.5 ml blood vs. those with < 5 CTCs/7.5 ml blood (median PFS: 4.3 vs. 7.0 months; p-value: 0.037). The prognostic relevance of CTCs was most significant in patients with HER2- mBC (median PFS: 4.1 vs. 8.3 months; p-value: 0.032), luminal (HR+HER2-) subtype (median PFS: 4.2 vs. 8.3 months; p-value: 0.048), and patients who had one or more prior treatments (median PFS: 4.2 vs. 7.0 months; p-value: 0.02). On multivariable analysis, baseline CTC level (hazard ratio (HR): 1.84, p-value: 0.02) and pre-treatment status (HR: 1.87, p-value: 0.05) were independent predictors of PFS. Conclusions: This work demonstrates the prognostic significance of CTCs in mBC detected using a label-free size-based enrichment platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite pronounced genomic and transcriptomic heterogeneity in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) not only between tumors, but also within a tumor, validation of clinically relevant gene signatures for prognostication has relied upon single-tissue samples, including 2 commercially available multigene tests (MGTs). Here we report an unanticipated impact of intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) on risk prediction of recurrence in NSCLC, underscoring the need for a better genomic strategy to refine prognostication. By leveraging label-free, inertial-focusing microfluidic approaches in retrieving circulating tumor cells (CTCs) at single-cell resolution, we further identified specific gene signatures with distinct expression profiles in CTCs from patients with differing metastatic potential. Notably, a refined prognostic risk model that reconciles the level of ITH and CTC-derived gene expression data outperformed the initial classifier in predicting recurrence-free survival (RFS). We propose tailored approaches to providing reliable risk estimates while accounting for ITH-driven variance in NSCLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a new technique for sensitive, quantitative and rapid detection of Plasmodium spp.-infected red blood cells (RBCs) by means of magnetic resonance relaxometry (MRR). During the intraerythrocytic cycle, malaria parasites metabolize large amounts of cellular hemoglobin and convert it into hemozoin crystallites. We exploit the relatively large paramagnetic susceptibility of these hemozoin particles, which induce substantial changes in the transverse relaxation rate of proton nuclear magnetic resonance of RBCs, to infer the 'parasite load' in blood. Using an inexpensive benchtop 0.5-Tesla MRR system, we show that with minimal sample preparatory steps and without any chemical or immunolabeling, a parasitemia level of fewer than ten parasites per microliter in a volume below 10 μl of whole blood is detected in a few minutes. We demonstrate this method both for cultured Plasmodium falciparum parasites and in vivo with Plasmodium berghei-infected mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detection and characterization of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the blood of cancer patients can potentially provide critical insights into tumor biology and hold great promise for cancer management. The ability to collect a large number of viable CTCs for various downstream assays such as quantitative measurements of specific biomarkers or targeted somatic mutation analysis is increasingly important in medical oncology. Here, we present a simple yet reliable microfluidic device for the ultra-high-throughput, label-free, size-based isolation of CTCs from clinically relevant blood volumes. The fast processing time of the technique (7.5 mL blood in less than 10 min) and the ability to collect more CTCs from larger blood volumes lends itself to a broad range of potential genomic and transcriptomic applications. A critical advantage of this protocol is the ability to return all fractions of blood (i.e., plasma (centrifugation), CTCs and white blood cells (WBCs) (size-based sorting)) that can be utilized for diverse biomarker studies or time-sensitive molecular assays such as RT-PCR. The clinical use of this biochip was demonstrated by detecting CTCs from 100% (10/10) of blood samples collected from patients with advanced-stage metastatic breast and lung cancers. The CTC recovery rate ranged from 20 to 135 CTCs mL−1 and obtained under high purity (of 1 CTC out of every 30–100 WBCs which gives ∼4 log depletion of WBCs). They were identified with immunofluorescence assays (pan-cytokeratin+/CD45−) and molecular probes such as HER2/neu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancer cells that can be isolated via liquid biopsy from blood and can be phenotypically and genetically characterized to provide critical information for guiding cancer treatment. Current analysis of CTCs is hindered by the throughput, selectivity and specificity of devices or assays used in CTC detection and isolation. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we enriched and characterized putative CTCs from blood samples of patients with both advanced stage metastatic breast and lung cancers using a novel multiplexed spiral microfluidic chip. This system detected putative CTCs under high sensitivity (100%, n = 56) (Breast cancer samples: 12–1275 CTCs/ml; Lung cancer samples: 10–1535 CTCs/ml) rapidly from clinically relevant blood volumes (7.5 ml under 5 min). Blood samples were completely separated into plasma, CTCs and PBMCs components and each fraction were characterized with immunophenotyping (Pan-cytokeratin/CD45, CD44/CD24, EpCAM), fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) (EML4-ALK) or targeted somatic mutation analysis. We used an ultra-sensitive mass spectrometry based system to highlight the presence of an EGFR-activating mutation in both isolated CTCs and plasma cell-free DNA (cf-DNA), and demonstrate concordance with the original tumor-biopsy samples. Conclusions/Significance: We have clinically validated our multiplexed microfluidic chip for the ultra high-throughput, low-cost and label-free enrichment of CTCs. Retrieved cells were unlabeled and viable, enabling potential propagation and real-time downstream analysis using next generation sequencing (NGS) or proteomic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enumeration and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), found in the peripheral blood of cancer patients, provide a potentially accessible source for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. This work reports on a novel spiral microfluidic device with a trapezoidal cross-section for ultra-fast, label-free enrichment of CTCs from clinically relevant blood volumes. The technique utilizes the inherent Dean vortex flows present in curvilinear microchannels under continuous flow, along with inertial lift forces which focus larger CTCs against the inner wall. Using a trapezoidal cross-section as opposed to a traditional rectangular cross-section, the position of the Dean vortex core can be altered to achieve separation. Smaller hematologic components are trapped in the Dean vortices skewed towards the outer channel walls and eventually removed at the outer outlet, while the larger CTCs equilibrate near the inner channel wall and are collected from the inner outlet. By using a single spiral microchannel with one inlet and two outlets, we have successfully isolated and recovered more than 80% of the tested cancer cell line cells (MCF-7, T24 and MDA-MB-231) spiked in 7.5 mL of blood within 8 min with extremely high purity (400–680 WBCs mL−1; ∼4 log depletion of WBCs). Putative CTCs were detected and isolated from 100% of the patient samples (n = 10) with advanced stage metastatic breast and lung cancer using standard biomarkers (CK, CD45 and DAPI) with the frequencies ranging from 3–125 CTCs mL−1. We expect this simple and elegant approach can surmount the shortcomings of traditional affinity-based CTC isolation techniques as well as enable fundamental studies on CTCs to guide treatment and enhance patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inertial microfluidics has recently drawn wide attention as an efficient, high-throughput microfluidic cell separation method. However, the achieved separation resolution and throughput, as well as the issues with cell dispersion due to cell-cell interaction, have appeared to be limiting factors in the application of the technique to real-world samples such as blood and other biological fluids. In this paper, we present a novel design of a spiral inertial microfluidic (trapezoidal cross-section) sorter with enhanced separation resolution and demonstrate its ability in separating/recovering polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) and mononuclear leukocytes (MNLs) from diluted human blood (1-2% hematocrit) with high efficiency (>80%). PMNs enriched by our method also showed negligible activation as compared to original input sample, while the conventional red blood cell (RBC) lysis method clearly induced artificial activation of the sensitive PMNs. Therefore, our proposed technique would be a promising alternative to enrich/separate sensitive blood cells for therapeutic or diagnostic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanical properties of cells can be correlated with various cell states and are now considered as an important class of biophysical markers. Effectiveness of existing high-throughput microfluidic techniques for investigating cell mechanical properties is adversely affected by cell-size variation in a given cell population. In this work, we introduce a new microfluidic system with real-time feedback control to evaluate single-cell deformability while minimizing cell-size dependence of the measurement. Using breast cancer cells (MCF-7), we demonstrate the potential of this system for stiffness profiling of cells in complex, diverse cell populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sepsis is an adverse systemic inflammatory response caused by microbial infection in blood. This paper reports a simple microfluidic approach for intrinsic, non-specific removal of both microbes and inflammatory cellular components (platelets and leukocytes) from whole blood, inspired by the invivo phenomenon of leukocyte margination. As blood flows through a narrow microchannel (20 × 20 µm), deformable red blood cells (RBCs) migrate axially to the channel centre, resulting in margination of other cell types (bacteria, platelets, and leukocytes) towards the channel sides. By using a simple cascaded channel design, the blood samples undergo a 2-stage bacteria removal in a single pass through the device, thereby allowing higher bacterial removal efficiency. As an application for sepsis treatment, we demonstrated separation of Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae spiked into whole blood, achieving high removal efficiencies of ∼80% and ∼90%, respectively. Inflammatory cellular components were also depleted by >80% in the filtered blood samples which could help to modulate the host inflammatory response and potentially serve as a blood cleansing method for sepsis treatment. The developed technique offers significant advantages including high throughput (∼1 ml/h per channel) and label-free separation which allows non-specific removal of any blood-borne pathogens (bacteria and fungi). The continuous processing and collection mode could potentially enable the return of filtered blood back to the patient directly, similar to a simple and complete dialysis circuit setup. Lastly, we designed and tested a larger filtration device consisting of 6 channels in parallel (∼6 ml/h) and obtained similar filtration performances. Further multiplexing is possible by increasing channel parallelization or device stacking to achieve higher throughput comparable to convectional blood dialysis systems used in clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrative Analysis and Machine Learning Based Characterization of Single Circulating Tumor Cells. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. References 1 Iyer A., Gupta K., Sharma S., Hari K., Lee Y.F., Ramalingam N., Yap Y.S., West J., Bhagat A.A., Subramani B.V. Integrative Analysis and Machine Learning based Characterization of Single Circulating Tumor Cells. [Extracted from the article]

We collated publicly available single-cell expression profiles of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and showed that CTCs across cancers lie on a near-perfect continuum of epithelial to mesenchymal (EMT) transition. Integrative analysis of CTC transcriptomes also highlighted the inverse gene expression pattern between PD-L1 and MHC, which is implicated in cancer immunotherapy. We used the CTCs expression profiles in tandem with publicly available peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) transcriptomes to train a classifier that accurately recognizes CTCs of diverse phenotype. Further, we used this classifier to validate circulating breast tumor cells captured using a newly developed microfluidic system for label-free enrichment of CTCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]