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Overview Of Cell Separation And Isolation

Overview Of Cell Separation And Isolation

Cell separation was first achieved in 1964 by S. H. Seal, who separated large tumor cells from the smaller blood cells using filtration. Two years later, Pohl and Hawk performed experiments on how cells respond differently to a nonuniform electric field based on the cell type. Such observations were the inception of cell separation methods, which allow isolating a single cell type from a heterogeneous sample.

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Mechano-Node-Pore Sensing: A Rapid, Label-Free Platform for Multi-Parameter Single-Cell Viscoelastic Measurements

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Microfluidic Sorting of Cells by Viability Based on Differences in Cell Stiffness.

Muhymin Islam¹, Hannah Brink², Syndey Blanche²

¹George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 801 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0405, USA.

Scientific Reports

|May 19, 2017

Summary

A novel microfluidic device separates live and dead cells using stiffness differences, crucial for effective cell therapy. This label-free method enhances cell purity for applications like stem cell transplantation.

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Area of Science:

Biomedical Engineering
Cell Biology
Microfluidics

Background:

Effective cell therapy relies on high-purity viable cell populations.
Current methods for excluding nonviable cells often involve density gradient centrifugation or antibody-based sorting, which can be complex or require labels.
Characterizing cell viability is essential, but efficient separation of viable from nonviable cells remains a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop and validate a label-free microfluidic technique for separating viable from nonviable cells based on differences in cellular stiffness.
To demonstrate the efficacy of this technique for enriching viable cells from cell lines and primary samples.

Main Methods:

A microfluidic device with diagonally ridged channels was designed to exploit differences in cell stiffness.
Nonviable cells, being stiffer, are deflected orthogonally to the flow, while softer, viable cells follow the main hydrodynamic path.
The technique was tested using Jurkat cells and subsequently on thawed cord blood samples for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Main Results:

The microfluidic device achieved a 185-fold enrichment of viable Jurkat cells.
Cell stiffness was confirmed as a reliable parameter for sorting, with nonviable cells exhibiting significantly greater stiffness.
For cord blood samples, viable nucleated cell purity increased from 65% to over 94%, with a 73% recovery rate of viable cells.

Conclusions:

Microfluidic stiffness sorting offers a simple, efficient, and label-free method for obtaining highly pure viable cell populations.
This technology holds significant potential for improving cell therapy product efficacy and applications such as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.