Abstract
Live cell manipulation is an important biotechnological tool for cellular and tissue level bioengineering applications due to its capacity for guiding cells for separation, isolation, concentration, and patterning. Magnetic force-based cell manipulation methods offer several advantages, such as low adverse effects on cell viability and low interference with the cellular environment. Furthermore, magnetic-based operations can be readily combined with microfluidic principles by precisely allowing control over the spatiotemporal distribution of physical and chemical factors for cell manipulation. In this review, we present recent applications of magnetic force-based cell manipulation in cellular and tissue bioengineering with an emphasis on applications with microfluidic components. Following an introduction of the theoretical background of magnetic manipulation, components of magnetic force-based cell manipulation systems are described. Thereafter, different applications, including separation of certain cell fractions, enrichment of rare cells, and guidance of cells into specific macro- or micro-arrangements to mimic natural cell organization and function, are explained. Finally, we discuss the current challenges and limitations of magnetic cell manipulation technologies in microfluidic devices with an outlook on future developments in the field.
Highlights
The manipulation of living cells by an external stimulus is an important tool for separation or detection of cells of interest and to guide cells in tissue engineering applications
Physical manipulation techniques are driven by intrinsic cell properties while affinitybased techniques use “labels”
The results indicated that cells seeded with magnetic cell manipulation expressed higher levels of osteogenic markers than cells seeded with static technique
Summary
The manipulation of living cells by an external stimulus is an important tool for separation or detection of cells of interest and to guide cells in tissue engineering applications. Anti-CD45-based immunomagnetic labels were used in a microfluidic device containing an attached microwell layer between a microchannel and a permanent magnet to collect individual THP-1 cells in the microwells (Huang et al, 2018).
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