Cell trapping is a very useful technique in a variety of cell-based assays and cellular research fields. It requires a high-throughput, high-efficiency operation to isolate cells of interest and immobilize the captured cells at specific positions. In this study, a dentate spiral microfluidic structure is proposed for cell trapping. The structure consists of a main spiral channel connecting an inlet and an out and a large number of dentate traps on the side of the channel. The density of the traps is high. When a cell comes across an empty trap, the cell suddenly makes a turn and enters the trap. Once the trap captures enough cells, the trap becomes closed and the following cells pass by the trap. The microfluidic structure is optimized based on the investigation of the influence over the flow. In the demonstration, 4T1 mouse breast cancer cells injected into the chip can be efficiently captured and isolated in the different traps. The cell trapping operates at a very high flow rate (40 μL/s) and a high trapping efficiency (>90%) can be achieved. The proposed high-throughput cell-trapping technique can be adopted in the many applications, including rapid microfluidic cell-based assays and isolation of rare circulating tumor cells from a large volume of blood sample.

中文翻译：

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齿状螺旋微流通道中的高通量细胞捕获。

在多种基于细胞的测定法和细胞研究领域中，细胞捕获是一项非常有用的技术。需要高通量，高效率的操作来分离目标细胞并将捕获的细胞固定在特定位置。在这项研究中，提出了一种齿状螺旋微流体结构用于细胞捕获。该结构由连接入口和出口的主螺旋形通道以及通道侧面上的大量齿状阱组成。陷阱的密度很高。当一个单元格碰到一个空的陷阱时，该单元格突然转弯并进入陷阱。一旦陷阱捕获了足够的细胞，陷阱就会关闭，随后的细胞会经过陷阱。基于对流动的影响的研究，优化了微流体结构。在示范中 注入芯片的4T1小鼠乳腺癌细胞可以有效地捕获并分离到不同的陷阱中。细胞捕获以非常高的流速（40μL/ s）运行，并且可以实现很高的捕获效率（> 90％）。所提出的高通量细胞捕获技术可以在许多应用中采用，包括基于微流细胞的快速分析以及从大量血液样本中分离罕见的循环肿瘤细胞。