A tool that can test a cancer patient's blood for rare tumor cells is extremely useful for checking if a tumor is going to spread. Now scientists have found a way to do this using "tilted" sound waves in a device no bigger than a small coin, offering an effective way of sorting cells without having to treat them with chemicals or deform them mechanically. The team includes members from MIT (Cambridge, MA), Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA), and Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), and reports its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Sound waves offer a way to sort cells without having to expose them to chemicals or damaging forces, as co-senior author of the new study, Dr. Ming Dao, a principal research scientist in MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, explains: "Acoustic pressure is very mild and much smaller in…
