Contemporary cancer research requires effective separation and isolation of single cells. Current sample handling and processing techniques is a bottleneck due to the amount of manual processing required as well as the need for high technical proficiency to achieve positive results.

There is a need for new technologies which liberate single cells from tissues in a rapid, gentle, and thorough manner. Microfluidic technologies have emerged as simple yet powerful methods for processing and manipulating cellular samples at the microscale. Migration of key tissue processing operations into a microfluidic platform addresses many of the key issues associated with current techniques.