Rare Cell Separation and Analysis by Magnetic Sorting

Abstract

Summary The separation and or isolation of rare cells using magnetic forces is commonly used and growing in use ranging from simple sample prep for further studies to a FDA approved, clinical diagnostic test. This grown is the result of both the demand to obtain homogeneous rare cells for molecular analysis and the dramatic increases in the power of permanent magnets that even allow the separation of some unlabeled cells based on intrinsic magnetic moments, such as malaria parasite-infected red blood cells.

Modulation of rotation-induced lift force for cell filtration in a low aspect ratio microchannel

“…A variety of membrane-free and label-free microfluidic systems have been reported using acoustic, 1,2 electric, 3 dielectric, 4,5 magnetic, 6,7 optical, 8 and hybrid [9][10][11] forces. These devices are based on the physical and morphological properties of target sample (e.g., cell size) and generally offer high filtration efficiency (g > 90%).…”

An Integrated Platform for Isolation, Processing, and Mass Spectrometry-based Proteomic Profiling of Rare Cells in Whole Blood*

“…Consider first rare cell isolation for which several approaches have recently been developed (9,10). A particularly powerful approach is magnet-activated cell sorting (MACS) where antibody-functionalized magnetic beads are utilized to enrich a subset of cells in a complex sample such as whole blood (10,11).…”

Geometrical optimization of microstripe arrays for microbead magnetophoresis

“…The line is a fit of the binomial distribution with probability given by Eq. (8) to the data with the parameters given in Table I for chip 2. The inset shows an example of an analyzed frame with stationary beads (red circles), phase-locked beads (green circles), and beads that could not be categorized (blue circles).…”

“…4,6,7 To obtain high throughput, magnetic forces have also been used to separate magnetic beads in a fluid flow. [8][9][10][11] Cleanroom fabrication has been used to fabricate chips with hard ferromagnetic materials in the micro regime that show a great reproducibility for purifying magnetic beads. [12][13][14] Moreover, arrays of cobalt micro-magnets in combination with a rotating external magnetic field have been used for the magnetophoretic transportation of magnetic beads, and their ability to separate beads with different magnetophoretic mobilities by tuning the frequency of the applied magnetic field has been demonstrated.…”