Design of a cellular-uptake-shielding magnetic catcher for cancer cell separation.

Fluorescent-magnetic-biotargeting multifunctional microcapsules (FMBMMs) are designed and fabricated via layer-by-layer assembly. It is found that the arginine-glycine-aspartate-modified FMBMMs were capable of sensitively detecting and efficiently isolating approximately 80% target cancer cells within 20 min. More importantly, FMBMMs present a general template for identifying and separating multiple types of cancer cells simply by altering the recognition motif.