Isolation of cultured cervical carcinoma cells mixed with peripheral blood cells on a bioelectronic chip

The separation and subsequent isolation of the metastatic human cervical carcinoma cell line (HeLa cells) from normal human peripheral blood cells has been achieved by exploiting their differential dielectric properties. The isolation process is carried out on a silicon chip containing a five-by-five array of microlocations. These microlocations contain underlying circular platinum electrodes with 80-micron diameters and center-to-center spacing of 200 microns. The surfaces of the electrodes and nonmetallized areas have been coated with a permeation layer to prevent the direct contact of cells with the electrode and also to minimize the nonspecific adhesion of the cells to the chip surface. An inhomogenous ac field is applied to the electrodes to create the conditions for dielectrophoretic separation of cells. Cell separation using dielectrophoresis as well as electronic lysis on a silicon chip would provide essential sample-processing steps which may be combined with a later multiplex electronic hybridization step in an integrated assay system.