A review: Dielectrophoresis for characterizing and separating similar cell subpopulations based on bioelectric property changes due to disease progression and therapy assessment

Abstract

This paper reviews the use of dielectrophoresis for high-fidelity separations and characterizations of subpopulations to highlight the recent advances in the electrokinetic field as well as provide insight into its progress toward commercialization. The role of cell subpopulations in heterogeneous clinical samples has been studied to deduce their role in disease progression and therapy resistance for instances such as cancer, tissue regeneration, and bacterial infection. Dielectrophoresis (DEP), a label-free electrokinetic technique, has been used to characterize and separate target subpopulations from mixed samples to determine disease severity, cell stemness, and drug efficacy. Despite its high sensitivity to characterize similar or related cells based on their differing bioelectric signatures, DEP has been slowly adopted both commercially and clinically. This review addresses the use of dielectrophoresis for the identification of target cell subtypes in stem cells, cancer cells, blood cells, and bacterial cells dependent on cell state and therapy exposure and addresses commercialization efforts in light of its sensitivity and future perspectives of the technology, both commercially and academically.

Dielectrophoretic characterization of macrophage phenotypes

“…Multiple repetitions or more sophisticated designs using DEP field flow fractionation could help increase purity. Combining DEP with other separation schemes, based on size, electrical impedance, or density, can further improve the separation efficiency and purity [64].…”

Fabrication and Separation of EGaIn Microparticles from Human Blood Based on Dielectrophoresis Force and a W-Type Electrode

“…In order to optimize the structure and driving parameters, the separation of heavy metals from blood with a W-type electrode platform based on the DEP force was first performed using COMSOL software. The DEP force F ⃗ DEP is defined as 22,43,44 where ε m is permittivity of the medium, r is the radius of the particle, ω = 2πf is the angular frequency, ∇ is the gradient operator, E ⃗ is the strength of the applied electric field, and R e [K*(ω)] is the real part of the complex Clausius−Mossotti (CM) factor as a function of frequency (ω) defined as 22,43,44 K ( )…”

“…where ε p * and ε m * are respectively the complex permittivity of the particle and the complex permittivity of the medium, ε* = ε − jσ/ω 22,43 is the effective complex permittivity, and ε and σ are respectively the dielectric permittivity and electric conductivity. The electric current field in the AC/DC module, the creeping flow field in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) module, and the fluid flow particle tracking in the particle tracking module were chosen according to the DEP principle and the experimental needs.…”

“…Moreover, we designed and fabricated a DEP device with a W-type electrode and a Y-type microchannel to maximize the possibility that all particles flowing in the channel experience a DEP force, which improve throughput (30 μL/min) and reduce costs. Compared to other electrodes such as interdigitated electrodes, 22 W-type electrodes have higher DEP force due to their longer finger length. In addition, we were able to sort particles with a wide size ranging from 1 to 50 μm.…”

A Critical Review on the Sensing, Control, and Manipulation of Single Molecules on Optofluidic Devices

“…Again, the laser power and flow velocity were adjusted in a way that pushes the larger particles (>1 µm) towards reservoir 1, eventually separating them from the mixture. Apart from optical methods, dielectrophoresis (DEP) is another remarkable technology that is used in microfluidic and optofluidic devices for separation, trapping, and many other applications [288,[294][295][296][297][298][299][300][301]. Figure 6b illustrates the details of a DEP-based particle separation method in a microfluidic device [288].…”