Design of large-scale separation systems for positive and negative immunomagnetic selection of cells using...

The ex vivo selective separation of cells from bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell preparations is increasingly used as an adjunct to hematopoietic rescue following high-dose therapy for refractory cancer. Immunomagnetic separation, in which the target cells are identified using monoclonal antibodies and separated by attachment to paramagnetic particles and passage through a magnetic field, is widely used for both negative and positive cell selection. In this paper, we discuss the factors that should be considered when developing a magnetic separation device for purging tumor cells and selecting stem cells from bone marrow using superparamagnetic microspheres.