Microfluidic rare cell analysis beyond counting: workflow design from enrichment to multi-omics.

Abstract

Rare cells, such as circulating tumour cells, minimal residual disease-associated populations, and antigen-specific immune cells, carry disproportionate diagnostic and therapeutic value. Yet rarity makes measurements fragile: sampling statistics, background interference, workflow-induced bias, and loss of provenance can dominate signals, making many molecular or functional assays impractical without prior enrichment. Microfluidics offers a route beyond capture-and-count by operating at cellular length scales, enabling deterministic handling, low-dead-volume processing, and integration of enrichment with analytical readouts in closed, automatable formats. In this Tutorial Review, we discuss microfluidic rare-cell platforms as information-preserving workflows that link sample burden, target/background contrast, metric prioritisation, and downstream assay compatibility. We first define rare-cell contexts and workflow constraints, then introduce scenario-dependent design rules that connect input burden, target/background contrast, performance metrics, and downstream assay compatibility. We next compare label-free methods, label-based strategies, and hybrid pipelines, emphasising trade-offs among recovery, purity, throughput, viability, phenotype preservation, and workflow stability. We then introduce analytical modules for captured rare cells, spanning identity-confirming counts, nucleic-acid assays, multiplexed protein measurements, and functional phenotyping. Finally, we discuss omics-enabled workflows and translation requirements for diagnosis, drug screening, cell-therapy development, clinical implementation, and industrial adoption.