An Ion Concentration Polarization Microplatform for Efficient Enrichment and Analysis of <i>ctDNA</i>.

Abstract

Strategies for rapid, effective nucleic acid processing hold tremendous significance to the clinical analysis of circulating tumor DNA (<i>ctDNA</i>), a family of important markers indicating tumorigenesis and metastasis. However, traditional techniques remain challenging to achieve efficient DNA enrichment, further bringing about complicated operation and limited detection sensitivity. Here, we developed an ion concentration polarization microplatform that enabled highly rapid, efficient enrichment and purification of <i>ctDNA</i> from a variety of clinical samples, including serum, urine, and feces. The platform demonstrated efficiently separating and enriching <i>ctDNA</i> within 30 s, with a 100-fold improvement over traditional methods. Integrating an <i>on-chip</i> isothermal amplification module, the platform further achieved 100-fold enhanced sensitivity in <i>ctDNA</i> detection, which significantly eliminated false-negative results in the serum or urine samples due to the low abundance of <i>ctDNA</i>. Such a simple-designed platform offers a user-friendly yet powerful diagnosis technique with a wide applicability, ranging from early tumor diagnosis to infection screening.