Hyphenation of sedimentation field flow fractionation with flow cytometry

Interest in the development of field flow fractionation (FFF) systems for cell sorting recently increased with the possibility of collecting and characterizing viable cellular materials. There are various tools for the analysis of cell characteristics, but the reference is small- and large-angle light scattering often coupled with fluorimetric measurements. The well-known flow cytometry (FC) cell analysis techniques can be associated with FFF leading to the possibility of collecting information provided by a remarkable separation technique for micron-sized particles (cells) operating in the steric-hyperlayer elution mode with multiparametric detection provided by flow cytometry. Moreover FFF derived cell characteristics can be correlated with FC characteristics to describe in a unique way the nature of the eluted materials. Experimental demonstrations are described herein using nucleated cells (HL-60 cell lineage) and human red blood cells (HRBC).