According to the report of the Communication and Information Center, in the commemoration ceremony of the 43rd anniversary of the establishment of the Academic Jihad, with the presence of the Vice President of Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, the head of the Academic Jihad and some military and national officials at the Royan Research Institute of "microfluidic chip for the isolation of circulating cancer cells in Blood (CTC)" was unveiled which was designed and built by the researchers of this institution.

This product, which will soon be released to the country's medical equipment market, monitors the condition of the disease and the process of response to treatment by detecting and isolating cancer cells in the patient's circulatory system with extremely high accuracy.

Mahdi Rahmanian, Director of the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Research Group of Motamed Cancer Research Institute, in explaining this research achievement, said: This CTC kit is in the form of a research project "to detect and isolate cancer cells in the patient's blood circulation using microfluidic chips was designed and built to assess the state of the disease and "Treatment Response Monitoring". Currently, the initial phase of commercialization of this kit has been completed and it is in the stage of obtaining a license from the General Directorate of Medical Equipment. Our prediction is that within the next three months we will be able to obtain the license and introduce the product to the market.

Explaining how the CTC kit works, he said: The studies conducted show that circulating tumor cells in the patient's blood are candidates for the prognosis, diagnosis and treatment of metastatic diseases. But the very small number of these cells among the billions of blood cells is a technical challenge that brings limitations such as low sensitivity and low purity for common isolation methods. Currently, a variety of microfluidic platforms have been developed to isolate circulating tumor cells from blood, but scientists have yet to come up with an efficient and low-cost strategy to meet this need.

Rahmanian clarified: The solution we have presented in this field is microfluidic chips based on micro base array (MPA-Chip) containing arrays of micro columns with rhombic geometry for CTC isolation. In this kit, by optimizing the placement of rhomboid obstacles as filters in the microfluidic channel, the purity and efficiency of separating cancer cells has increased compared to the similar external sample, and the effects of mechanical stress have been minimized on the trapped cells.

     By stating that this kit is capable of separating a cancer cell from 10 ml of patient's blood sample, and its cost is one tenth of the price of a similar foreign kit, he stated: The results of our investigation, which was published in an article in the Journal of advanced research published with an efficiency factor of 12.8, the rhombus geometry, which was selected as the most effective new design for CTC separation, increased absorption efficiency (88%), purity (more than 90%), and viability (97%), and overall performance efficiency higher than similar foreign kits.