Mesoscale blood cell sedimentation for processing millilitre sample volumes

Abstract

We demonstrate the efficient separation of blood cells from millilitre volumes of whole blood in minutes using a simple gravity sedimentation device. Blood cell and plasma separation is often the initial step in clinical diagnostics, and reliable separation techniques have remained a major obstacle for the success of point-of-care or remote diagnostics. Unlike plasma collection devices that rely solely on microchannels that restrict sample volume and throughput, we demonstrate the use of a hybrid micro/mesoscale sedimentation chamber to enable >99% capture of cells from millilitre blood samples in less than two minutes.

Engineered Membranes for Residual Cell Trapping on Microfluidic Blood Plasma Separation Systems: A Comparison between Porous and Nanofibrous Membranes

“…In addition, Figure 1Ci,Cii show the morphologies of the back and front sides of the This two-step strategy should simultaneously achieve high yield (via the HBPS device) and high purity (via the collection of residual blood cells from the HBPS device on the MFU) in the milliliter range blood plasma separation. As HBPS performance decreases upon increasing plasma yields [16][17][18][19][20], combining BPS system hydrodynamic and membrane separation may permit removing the residual RBCs despite increasing plasma yields.…”

Total microfluidic platform strategy for liquid biopsy

“…However, these methods can be greatly improved by combining with either each other or adopting active separation technology. Although not mentioned in this section, active separation utilizing various fields (e.g., acoustic field, electrical field, magnetic field, and field flow fractionation), can be utilized for development of hybrid plasma separation with the passive methods [58,59]. In fact, centrifugationbased microfluidics would be the most potent technique to extract pure plasma with high-throughput capacity, even though it requires further validation.…”

Engineered membranes for residual cell trapping on microfluidic blood plasma separation systems. A comparison between porous and nanofibrous membranes

“…This two-step strategy should allow the simultaneous achievement of high yield (via the HBPS device) and high purity (via the collection of residual blood cells from the HBPS device on the MFU) in the milliliter range blood plasma separation. In fact, HBPS performance decreases upon increasing plasma yields [9][10][11][12][13]. Combining in the same BPS system hydrodynamic and membrane separation may permit removing the residual RBCs due to an increase of the plasma yields.…”

“…If larger blood volumes are needed (milliliter range), such in the case of amplification of rare circulating DNA from plasma [8], hydrodynamic blood plasma separation (HBPS) is preferred because it avoids the saturation usually quickly reached by membrane-based separation. These approaches permit achieving plasma purity close to 100%, although plasma yields are usually low (1-15%) and often the plasma purity decreases upon increasing plasma yields [9][10][11][12][13].…”