biostudies-literatureZhang YNational Key R&D Program of ChinaNational Natural Science Foundation of China3338https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC9964901biostudies-literatureUnknown24(4)Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) play an important role in the prognosis and efficacy evaluation of metastatic tumors. Since CTCs are present in very low concentrations in the blood and the phenotype is dynamically changing, it is a great challenge to achieve efficient separation while maintaining their viability. In this work, we designed an acoustofluidic microdevice for CTCs separation based on the differences in cell physical properties of size and compressibility. Efficient separation can be achieved with only one piece of piezoceramic working on alternating frequency mode. The separation principle was simulated by numerical calculation. Cancer cells from different tumor types were separated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), with capture efficiency higher than 94% and a cInternational journal of molecular sciencesLabel-Free Separation of Circulating Tumor Cells and Clusters by Alternating Frequency Acoustic Field in a Microfluidic Chip.PMC9964901120753302022YFC2402300Fu QLiu YHuang TZhang ZZhang YZheng DfalseLabel-Free Separation of Circulating Tumor Cells and Clusters by Alternating Frequency Acoustic Field in a Microfluidic Chip.Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) play an important role in the prognosis and efficacy evaluation of metastatic tumors. Since CTCs are present in very low concentrations in the blood and the phenotype is dynamically changing, it is a great challenge to achieve efficient separation while maintaining their viability. In this work, we designed an acoustofluidic microdevice for CTCs separation based on the differences in cell physical properties of size and compressibility. Efficient separation can be achieved with only one piece of piezoceramic working on alternating frequency mode. The separation principle was simulated by numerical calculation. Cancer cells from different tumor types were separated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), with capture efficiency higher than 94% and a c2023-01-01T00:00:00Z2023 Feb2025-04-26T00:12:20.656Z2025-02-18T23:57:44.925ZS-EPMC99649013683475010.3390/ijms24043338