Lab-on-chip for cancer diagnosis

Imec and its project partners have launched the European Seventh Framework Project Miracle that aims to develop an operational lab-on-chip for isolating and detecting circulating and disseminated tumour cells (CTC and DTCs) in blood.

The new lab-on-chip is an essential step towards faster and cost-efficient diagnosis of cancer.

Detecting circulating and disseminated tumour cells in blood is a promising methodology to diagnose cancer dissemination or to follow up cancer patients during therapy.

Today, the detection analyses of these cells are performed in medical laboratories requiring labour-intensive, expensive and time-consuming sample processing and cell isolation steps. A full tumour cell detection analysis can take more than a day.

A lab-on-chip, integrating the many processing steps, would enable a faster, easy-to-use detection of tumour cells in blood. They are labour saving and minimally invasive, increasing the patient's comfort and the efficieny of today's healthcare.