Fast Capturing on Micromagnetic Cell Sorter

A new micro immune-magnetophoretic cell sorter (micro IMP cell sorter) has been developed to isolate T lymphocytes from biological suspensions such as whole blood. By using two permanent magnets, the developed micro IMP cell sorter is designed to isolate target cells continuously and automatically without a preliminary labeling process which is often acting as a bottleneck in automated microcell sorters. By using the capture probability analysis and the binding kinetic analysis, fast capturing of the target cells was achieved in the straight microfluidic channel between the magnets within 20 s of flow time. Multiphysical simulations including fluidic and electromagnetic models were carried out describing the trajectory of the magnetic particle, also. The fabricated microcell sorter was tested for sorting of CD3+ T lymphocytes with Dynabead CD3 from a mixture of T lymphocytes and erythrocytes.