Microfluidic device with dual-channel fluorescence acquisition for quantfication/identification of cancer cells

An optofluidic device for cell discrimination with two independent interrogation regions is presented. Pumping light coupling to the device and cells’ fluorescence extraction from the two interrogation zones is accomplished employing optical fibers embedded in said optofluidic chip. To test the reliability of this device AU-565 cells -expressing EpCAM and HER2 receptors- and RAMOS cells were mixed in a controlled manner, confined inside an hydrodynamic focused flow in the microfluidic chip and detected individually to be later discriminated as positive (signal re- ception from fluorescently labeled antibodies from the AU-565 cells) or negative events (RAMOS cells). A correlation analysis is performed over the two intensity versus time signals obtained at each of the two interrogation zones. A post-processing analysis permits a peak-to-peak pairing between the two output signals, being the detected peaks at each channel events related to the passing of a single cell through an interrogation region. Said method reduces the influence of noise on the overall data and allows to better discern actual cells’ characteristic intensity bursts from noise without the need of digitally aided signal processing.