Distinct separation of multiple CTCs using inertial focusing phenomena utilizing single-looped spiral microfluidic lab-on-chip

•The present work proposed a novel single looped based spiral microfluidic device for distinct separation of two types of CTCs (MCF-7 and PC3-9 with 24 µm and 18 µm average diameter respectively) from the blood cells.•A multi-CTC sorter has been developed based on single-looped spiral for continuous separation of three types of CTCs such as (MCF-7, PC3-9, A549 with 27 µm, 20 µm and 15 µm average diameter respectively) from blood cells.•The separations are achieved using inertial focusing phenomena. Looking towards the point-of-care diagnosis purposes, nowadays the most emerging method for separation of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) from normal blood-cells is the inertial focusing phenomena utilizing microfluidic lab-on-chips. Keeping eye on the distinctly separating multiple CTCs from normal blood-cells, here we designed a single-looped spiral microfluidic lab-on-chip based on inertial focusing phenomena, which has been more efficient than double-looped and three-looped spirals. The performance of the device has been investigated using large MCF-7 (breast-cancer CTCs), PC3-9 (prostate-cancer CTCs) and normal blood-cells (white blood-cell, red blood-cell) and also larger multiple CTCs like largest MCF-7, PC3-9, A549 (lung-cancer CTCs) cells and normal blood-cells in three-dimensional numerical simulation utilizing COMSOL Multiphysics 5.4 software. In both cases the chip has accomplished efficient separation performance of nearly 100 % at the Reynolds number ranges from 55.9 - 65 (throughput 70 - 82 ml/h) and 114.74 (throughput of 147 ml/h) respectively in terms of cell separation purity and recovery.