The CTC Isolator is built around a microfluidic chip, developed at MGH, which isolates circulating tumor cells from a patient blood sample reliably enough to support cancer screening and drug development. Members of the Design by Boyd team had transformed the operation of the chip from a tedious, two-hour manual process to an automated one, requiring only a few minutes of setup.  This automation involved systems to align magnetic fields, prime the microfluidics chip, control the flow of the blood sample through the chip, and determine when the process was complete – all of which was being done manually.

In 2025, TellBio asked Design by Boyd to build three CTC Isolator systems, drawing in part from existing stock of components and working around known gaps in the documentation. This was a controlled build of an established design, the kind of work where success depends less on starting from a blueprint and more on understanding the instrument well enough to fill in what the blueprint leaves out.

That understanding showed itself early. During the build, the team identified a problem in which the power supply was being overtaxed by the valve actuation sequence, causing a brief loss of system power. The original solution, a small change to the valve actuation sequence in the software, had been worked out years earlier but was missing from the inherited documentation. A partner unfamiliar with the instrument might have spent significant time isolating the cause. Because Design by Boyd had designed the product, the team recognized the behavior quickly, traced it to the actuation sequence, and restored the software change to eliminate the power loss. Across the three builds, the team documented the gaps they encountered, turning each missing detail and each resolved issue into a clearer record of how the instrument should be built and maintained going forward.