3D-Printed Smartphone-Based Device for Label-Free Cell Separation

Abstract

Aim: To assess several fabrication metrics of a 3D-printed smartphone-attachable continuous-flow magnetic focusing device for real-time separation and detection of different cell types based on their volumetric mass density in high-volume samples. Method: The smartphone apparatus has been designed and fabricated using three different 3D printing method. Several 3D printing metrics including cost, printing time, and resolution have been evaluated to propose a cost-efficient and high-performance platform for low-resource settings. Results: To apply the magnetic focusing technique on large sample volumes, a heterogeneous mixture of sample (e.g., containing blood cells and cancer cells) suspended in paramagnetic medium is pumped through a magnetic field at an optimum flow rate. The performance of the 3D-printed device has been investigated by demonstrating separation of microspheres, breast, lung, ovarian and prostate cancer cells mixed with blood cells. The separation distance of cancer and blood cells is around 100 μm, allowing the two cell types to be easily distinguished. Conclusion: This device could be useful for clinical centers in low-income countries where expensive infrastructure, equipment (e.g., FACS) and technical expertise are lacking. This device could ultimately be applied to rare cell separation and purification.

Density-based Food Analysis Using a Smartphone

“…It should also be noted that the paramagnetic solutions used here are limited by the range of density liquids they can detect. However, it has been shown that the range can be shifted by changing the density of the paramagnetic medium and it can be expanded by increasing the concentration of the paramagnetic medium [16][17][18][19][20].…”

Sensing of electrolytes in urine using a miniaturized paper-based device

“…The custom-designed case of our fluorescence reader was 3D-printed using black thermoplastic material. After capturing the fluorescence image, a custom-designed smartphone application wirelessly transmits the image to a server (which could also be a local computer or laptop) for rapid and automated quantification of the ion concentrations [33][34][35][36] . The images are processed using a custom-developed algorithm and the concentration measurement of each ion in the sample of interest is returned back to the smartphone within ~ 90 s, and is displayed to the user through the same smartphone application.…”

HologLev: Hybrid Magnetic Levitation Platform Integrated with Lensless Holographic Microscopy for Density-Based Cell Analysis

“…Magnetic levitation has been an attractive tool for researchers from a variety of disciplines in life sciences 11 due to its simplicity, cost-effectiveness and minimal effort for processing of the sample but above all, major advantages is to provide label-free separation of target cells in a heterogeneous solution. So far, a wide range of applications including label-free separation of malaria-infected red blood cells, sickle cells 12 , blood 12,13 , tumor cells 8,13 , adipocytes 14 , and cardiomyocytes 15 , realization of microparticle-based immunoassays 16,17 and biofabrication of cells [18][19][20] have been achieved by applying magnetic levitation technology.…”