Cancer metastasis is the process of tumour cells invading from the primary tumour site to other tissues or organs in the body, which significantly increases the morbidity and mortality of cancer patients. Conventional approaches to probe cancer metastasis have several limitations: (1) invasion assays based on petri dishes are of low physiological relevance and lack the specific character of the microenvironment; (2) transwell-based transmigration assays are only semi-quantitative; and (3) animal experiments are time-consuming and lack of appropriate controls. To improve these shortcomings, microfluidic devices are developed to investigate the mechanisms of cancer metastasis, which can significantly enhance the physiological relevance and improve real-time quantitative analysis. In this paper, we review recent progress in microfluidic devices used for probing cancer metastasis. We highlight the unique features of the updated microfluidic devices and their broad application to cancer metastasis research.

癌症转移是肿瘤细胞从原发性肿瘤部位侵袭到体内其他组织或器官的过程，这显着增加了癌症患者的发病率和死亡率。探测癌症转移的常规方法有几个局限性：（1）基于陪替氏培养皿的侵袭测定具有较低的生理相关性，并且缺乏微环境的特定特征；（2）基于Transwell的迁移分析仅是半定量的；（3）动物实验费时且缺乏适当的对照。为了改善这些缺点，开发了微流体装置来研究癌症转移的机制，这可以显着增强生理相关性并改善实时定量分析。在本文中，我们回顾了用于探测癌症转移的微流控设备的最新进展。我们重点介绍了更新的微流控设备的独特功能及其在癌症转移研究中的广泛应用。