Ultra-thin elastomer membrane array wrinkling for bladder cancer diagnosis

Abstract

We report an ultra-thin silicone membrane array to simultaneously discern the presence of cancerous cells in as many as 16 samples from multiple individuals. This high throughput parallel array relies on the intrinsic and specific biophysical properties of cancerous cells to induce deformation, or `wrinkling' on the arrayed membrane. In contrast, non-cancerous cells fail to generate these membrane wrinkles. We evaluated an initial pilot study to test clinical urine samples from patients at a high risk for bladder cancer. We also expanded the functionality of the ultra-thin membrane array beyond bladder cancer toward the screening of cervical cancer. This screening array has the potential to be deployed at the point-of-care to improve throughput compared to sequential analysis by individual membranes and may be able to enhance reliability and accuracy by coordinating controls for false results concurrently.