Cascade and staggered dielectrophoretic cell sorters

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Microfluidics
• Cell Separation Technology

Background:

• Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a label-free method for manipulating biological cells.
• Existing microfluidic cell sorters face limitations in purity and throughput.
• Continuous flow cell sorting is crucial for high-volume biological sample processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate two novel microfluidic cell sorter designs based on negative dielectrophoresis (DEP).
• To enhance the purity and throughput of isolated target cells in continuous flow operations.
• To demonstrate the efficacy of these DEP sorters using both microparticles and cancer cell lines.

Main Methods:

• Development of two distinct microfluidic cell sorter configurations: a cascade sorter for purity and a staggered side channel sorter for throughput.
• Utilized negative dielectrophoresis (DEP) with applied voltages ranging from 0-20 V(p-p) and frequencies from 0-10 MHz.
• Tested sorter performance using carboxylate microspheres of varying sizes, followed by human prostate cancer (LNCaP) and colorectal cancer (HCT116) cell lines.

Main Results:

• The cascade configuration sorter improved isolation purity from 80% to 96% compared to a single side channel DEP cell sorter.
• The staggered side channel sorter increased sample throughput from 0.2 to 0.65 μL/min without compromising enrichment factor.
• Demonstrated successful cell separation and enrichment of cancer cell lines using the developed DEP sorters.

Conclusions:

• The developed negative dielectrophoresis (DEP) microfluidic cell sorters offer significant improvements in both isolation purity and sample throughput.
• The cascade and staggered side channel designs provide distinct advantages for specific cell sorting applications.
• These novel DEP cell sorters show great potential for advanced biological sample processing and analysis.