Cell Separations and Sorting

Abstract

The development of new methods and technologies for cell separation, sorting, selection, isolation, or enrichment (many times the aforementioned terms are used interchangeably) are becoming more imperative due in part to the wealth of research aimed at addressing issues for the analysis of liquid biopsy targets, such as rare cells, to realize the concept of "precision medicine". Precision medicine is defined as "treatments targeted to the needs of individual patients on the basis of genetic, biomarker, phenotypic, or psychosocial characteristics that distinguish a patient from others with similar clinical presentations." 1 Before full implementation of precision medicine in a hospital or clinical setting, technological discoveries must be realized to assist in the analysis of disease-associated cells enriched from complex samples.Liquid biopsy markers and the cargo that they carry have been shown to be an attractive source of information that can be used to facilitate precise decisions for disease management. These biomarkers include, but are not limited to, rare cells such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) or cancer stem cells (CSCs), immune cells (i.e., CD8+ T-cells), bacterial and viral cells, cell-free molecules such as cell free DNA (cfDNA), and extracellular vesicles (EVs). Liquid biopsies are attractive because of the minimally invasive nature of the sampling method (i.e., collection of peripheral blood, urine, saliva) to secure relevant biomarkers. These biomarkers can enable precision medicine decisions on managing a variety of diseases, including oncology and nononcology-related diseases. 2,3 Liquid biopsies *

Identifying and Manipulating Giant Vesicles: Review of Recent Approaches

“…In addition, size sorting techniques for GVs using microfluidic devices have recently been proposed following cell sorting microfluidic technology [ 67 ]. Kazayama et al reported that deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a promising mechanism for GV size sorting ( Figure 3 a).…”

High-throughput concentration of rare malignant tumor cells from large-volume effusions by multistage inertial microfluidics

“…With the advent of microfabrication, various novel microfluidic sorters have been developed to achieve the separation of different cells according to their biochemical and physical properties. 9–13 To meet the demands for rare cell separation, continuous efforts have been made to improve the processing throughput and separation precision. Researchers have successfully employed microfluidics to separate rare circulating tumor cells, 14–16 CTC clusters, 17 MTCs, 18 and fetal nucleated red blood cells 19 from clinical specimens with complex cell populations.…”

Mag-spinner: a next-generation Facile, Affordable, Simple, and porTable (FAST) magnetic separation system

“…Among the various separation techniques, magnetic separation is one of the most effective methods for the high throughput and low-cost isolation of target analytes. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Effective magnetic separation makes it possible to isolate circulating tumor cells in the blood for further analysis, which is crucial in cancer diagnosis and the development of personalized treatments. [22][23][24][25][26] Bacteria at very low concentrations can also be puried and concentrated effectively through magnetic separation to monitor food poisoning and infectious disease.…”