Abstract
Magnetic cell separation has become a key methodology for the isolation of target cell populations from biological suspensions, covering a wide spectrum of applications from diagnosis and therapy in biomedicine to environmental applications or fundamental research in biology. There now exists a great variety of commercially available separation instruments and reagents, which has permitted rapid dissemination of the technology. However, there is still an increasing demand for new tools and protocols which provide improved selectivity, yield and sensitivity of the separation process while reducing cost and providing a faster response. This review aims to introduce basic principles of magnetic cell separation for the neophyte, while giving an overview of recent research in the field, from the development of new cell labeling strategies to the design of integrated microfluidic cell sorters and of point-of-care platforms combining cell selection, capture, and downstream detection. Finally, we focus on clinical, industrial and environmental applications where magnetic cell separation strategies are amongst the most promising techniques to address the challenges of isolating rare cells.
Highlights
Cell separation is a critical step in biological and biomedical research areas as diverse as biodetection, drug testing, tissue engineering, cell-based therapies and clinical diagnostics.Isolating a cell population from a heterogeneous sample enables the identification, study, and analysis of specific cell types, while reducing contamination from others
While we have focused our attention here on the widely explored fields of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and pathogen detection, there are many other applications related to magnetic separation, such as detection of malaria-infected cells [288,289,290,291,292], peripheral blood lymphocytes sorting in different T cell subsets for immunotherapy [293,294], cell counting for disease
While we have focused our attention here on the widely explored fields of CTCs and pathogen detection, there are many other applications related to magnetic separation, such as detection of malaria-infected cells [288,289,290,291,292], peripheral blood lymphocytes sorting in different T cell subsets for immunotherapy [293,294], cell counting for disease monitoring [295], as well as phenotypic cell sorting
Summary
Cell separation is a critical step in biological and biomedical research areas as diverse as biodetection, drug testing, tissue engineering, cell-based therapies and clinical diagnostics. Isolating a cell population from a heterogeneous sample enables the identification, study, and analysis of specific cell types, while reducing contamination from others. Minimizing cell loss and maximizing cell purification efficiency are often crucial aspects in cell-based therapeutics [1], where consistency of the isolated cell population is essential to ensure adapted cell transplant. Despite the variety of already existing cell purification approaches, there is a constantly increasing demand for the development of separation devices with improved performance, capable of processing large sample volumes, while enabling the accurate sub-selection of potentially rare target cell populations.
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