Inertial Microfluidic Separation of Cell Clusters from Blood Cells in Meandering Channels

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Microfluidics
• Cell Biology

Background:

• Inertial microfluidics effectively separates particles and cells by size and mechanical properties.
• Isolating cell clusters from single blood cells using meandering channels is an underexplored area.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the potential of inertial focusing in S-shaped meandering channels for separating two-cell clusters from single blood cells.
• To establish a systematic framework for designing inertial microfluidic devices for cell cluster isolation.

Main Methods:

• Lagrangian analysis of passive-tracer trajectories to understand cumulative secondary transport.
• Development and validation of a computational model against experimental data for predicting particle focusing positions.
• Experimental validation using red blood cells and MCF7 cell lines to confirm model accuracy.

Main Results:

• Identified four recurrent transport regions explaining size- and shape-dependent focusing.
• Accurate prediction of distinct focusing positions for 8μm and 15μm particles.
• In silico evaluation of two-cell cluster separation from single cells across various microchannel designs, providing guidelines for optimization.

Conclusions:

• This work provides a systematic framework for designing inertial microfluidic devices for cell cluster isolation.
• The study highlights the efficacy of S-shaped meandering channels for separating cell clusters from single cells.