Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are the primary cause of tumor metastasis after surgery. Metastatic tumor recurrence is the leading reason of cancer death. It is prerequisite to develop a platform for CTCs separation to predict the cancer cell transfer in important organs. Herein, a novel acoustic microfluidic device was designed to capture the "true" CTCs from the whole blood sample. The blood got from the mice with breast tumors removed. There are some CTCs that have escaped from the solid tumor contained in these blood samples, instead of artificially mixing individual tumor cells into normal blood. In addition, the predictions of tumor prognosis are made based on the number of CTCs captured by the acoustofluidic device. Finally, the prediction has been confirmed through long-term observation of mice with tumor excised. The acoustofluidic device can efficiently capture CTCs and predict the tumor metastasis, which can help clinicians plan follow-up treatment for patients who have had their tumors surgically removed.

We propose an innovative design of microrobot, which can achieve donor cell suction, delivery and injection in a mammalian oocyte on microfluidic chip. The microrobot body contains a hollow space that produces suction and ejection forces for injection of cell nuclei using a nozzle at the tip of the robot. Specifically, a controller changes the hollow volume by balancing the magnetic and elastic forces of the membrane, and along with motion of stages in the XY plane. A glass capillary attached at the tip of the robot contains the nozzle is able to absorb and inject cell nuclei. The microrobot provides three degrees of freedom and generates micronewton forces. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed microrobot through an experiment of absorption and ejection of 20 μm particles from the nozzle using magnetic control in a microfluidic chip.