Polyacrylamide microbeads with entrapped protein A from S. aureus for cell separation

A technique was developed for the identification and separation of cells according to their surface antigenic markers, based on immobilization of protein A by entrapment in polyacrylamide microbeads. This method is further development of the previous techniques with SpA-containing S. aureus bacteria, but has the advantage of having less unspecific binding to the cells. We show that this technique might be a useful tool for the separation of cells, exemplified by separation of cells on Petri dishes coated with a monolayer of SpA-microbeads. The viability of separated cells was unaffected and adherent cells were easily removed by trypsin.