Cell tracking velocimetry as a tool for defining saturation binding of magnetically conjugated antibodies

Applications of magnetic and electromagnetic forces in micro-analytical systems

Novel applications of magnetic fields in analytical chemistry have become a remarkable trend in the last two decades. Various magnetic forces have been employed for the migration, orientation, manipulation, and trapping of microparticles, and new analytical platforms for separating and detecting molecules have been proposed. Magnetic materials such as functional magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic nanocomposites, and specially designed magnetic solids and liquids have also been developed for analytical purposes. Numerous attractive applications of magnetic and electromagnetic forces on magnetic and non-magnetic materials have been studied, but fundamental studies to understand the working principles of magnetic forces have been challenging. These studies will form a new field of magneto-analytical science, which should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. In this review, essential pioneering works and recent attractive developments are presented.

Microfluidic chip for graduated magnetic separation of circulating tumor cells by their epithelial cell adhesion molecule expression and magnetic nanoparticle binding

The enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral bloodstream of metastatic cancer patients has contributed to improvements in prognosis and therapeutics. There have been numerous approaches to capture and counting of CTCs. However, CTCs have potential information beyond simple enumeration and hold promise as a liquid biopsy for cancer and a pathway for personalized cancer therapy by detecting the subset of CTCs having the highest metastatic potential. There is evidence that epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) expression level distinguishes these highly metastatic CTCs. The few previous approaches to selective CTC capture according to EpCAM expression level are reviewed. A new two-stage microfluidic device for separation, enrichment and release of CTCs into subpopulations sorted by EpCAM expression level is presented here. It relies upon immunospecific magnetic nanoparticle labeling of CTCs followed by their field- and flow-based separation in the first stage and capture as discrete subpopulations in the second stage. To fine tune the separation, the magnetic field profile across the first stage microfluidic channel may be modified by bonding small Vanadium Permendur strips to its outer walls. Mathematical modeling of magnetic fields and fluid flows supports the soundness of the design.

The Fabrication and Application Mechanism of Microfluidic Systems for High Throughput Biomedical Screening: A Review

Microfluidic systems have been widely explored based on microfluidic technology, and it has been widely used for biomedical screening. The key parts are the fabrication of the base scaffold, the construction of the matrix environment in the 3D system, and the application mechanism. In recent years, a variety of new materials have emerged, meanwhile, some new technologies have been developed. In this review, we highlight the properties of high throughput and the biomedical application of the microfluidic chip and focus on the recent progress of the fabrication and application mechanism. The emergence of various biocompatible materials has provided more available raw materials for microfluidic chips. The material is not confined to polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and the extracellular microenvironment is not limited by a natural matrix. The mechanism is also developed in diverse ways, including its special physical structure and external field effects, such as dielectrophoresis, magnetophoresis, and acoustophoresis. Furthermore, the cell/organ-based microfluidic system provides a new platform for drug screening due to imitating the anatomic and physiologic properties in vivo. Although microfluidic technology is currently mostly in the laboratory stage, it has great potential for commercial applications in the future.

Continuous separation principles using external microaction forces

During the past decade, methods for the continuous separation of microparticles with microaction forces have rapidly advanced. Various action forces have been used in designs of both microchannel and capillary continuous separation systems, which depend on properties such as conductivity, permittivity, absorptivity, refractive index, magnetic susceptibility, and compressibility. Particle migration velocity has been used to characterize the particles. Biological cells have been the most interesting targets of these continuous separation methods.

Sequential CD34 cell fractionation by magnetophoresis in a magnetic dipole flow sorter

Cell separation and fractionation based on fluorescent and magnetic labeling procedures are common tools in contemporary research. These techniques rely on binding of fluorophores or magnetic particles conjugated to antibodies to target cells. Cell surface marker expression levels within cell populations vary with progression through the cell cycle. In an earlier work we showed the reproducible magnetic fractionation (single pass) of the Jurkat cell line based on the population distribution of CD45 surface marker expression. Here we present a study on magnetic fractionation of a stem and progenitor cell (SPC) population using the established acute myelogenous leukemia cell line KG-1a as a cell model. The cells express a CD34 cell surface marker associated with the hematopoietic progenitor cell activity and the progenitor cell lineage commitment. The CD34 expression level is approximately an order of magnitude lower than that of the CD45 marker, which required further improvements of the magnetic fractionation apparatus. The cells were immunomagnetically labeled using a sandwich of anti-CD34 antibody-phycoerythrin (PE) conjugate and anti-PE magnetic nanobead and fractionated into eight components using a continuous flow dipole magnetophoresis apparatus. The CD34 marker expression distribution between sorted fractions was measured by quantitative PE flow cytometry (using QuantiBRITE PE calibration beads), and it was shown to be correlated with the cell magnetophoretic mobility distribution. A flow outlet addressing scheme based on the concept of the transport lamina thickness was used to control cell distribution between the eight outlet ports. The fractional cell distributions showed good agreement with numerical simulations of the fractionation based on the cell magnetophoretic mobility distribution in the unsorted sample.

Differences in magnetically induced motion of diamagnetic, paramagnetic, and superparamagnetic microparticles detected by cell tracking velocimetry

Magnetic separation in biomedical applications is based on differential magnetophoretic mobility (MM) of microparticulate matter in viscous media. Typically, the difference in MM is obtained by selectively labeling the target cells with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs). We have measured the MM of monodisperse, polystyrene microspheres (PSMs), with and without attached SPIONs as a model of cell motion induced by nanoparticle magnetization, using variable H field and cell tracking velocimetry (CTV). As a model of paramagnetic microparticle motion, the MM measurements were performed on the same PSMs in paramagnetic gadolinium solutions, and on spores of a prokaryotic organism, Bacillus globigii (shown to contain paramagnetic manganese). The CTV analysis was sensitive to the type of the microparticle magnetization, producing a value of MM independent of the applied H field for the paramagnetic species, and a decreasing MM value with an increasing field for superparamagnetic species, as predicted from theory. The SPION-labeled PSMs exhibited a saturation magnetization above H approximately = 64,000 A m(-1) (or 0.08 tesla). Based on those data, the average saturation magnetizations of the SPIONs was calculated and shown to vary between different commercial sources. The results demonstrate sensitivity of the CTV analysis to different magnetization mechanisms of the microparticles.

Quantitative intracellular magnetic nanoparticle uptake measured by live cell magnetophoresis

Superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particles have been used successfully as an intracellular contrast agent for nuclear MRI cell tracking in vivo. We present a method of detecting intracellular SPIO colloid uptake in live cells using cell magnetophoresis, with potential applications in measuring intracellular MRI contrast uptake. The method was evaluated by measuring shifts in mean and distribution of the cell magnetophoretic mobility, and the concomitant changes in population frequency of the magnetically positive cells when compared to the unmanipulated negative control. Seven different transfection agent (TA) -SPIO complexes based on dendrimer, lipid, and polyethylenimine compounds were used as test standards, in combination with 3 different cell types: mesenchymal stem cells, cardiac fibroblasts, and cultured KG-1a hematopoietic stem cells. Transfectol (TRA) -SPIO incubation resulted in the highest frequency of magnetically positive cells (>90%), and Fugene 6 (FUG) -SPIO incubation the lowest, below that when using SPIO alone. A highly regular process of cell magnetophoresis was amenable to intracellular iron mass calculations. The results were consistent in all the cell types studied and with other reports. The cell magnetophoresis depends on the presence of high-spin iron species and is therefore expected to be directly related to the cell MRI contrast level.

Continuous flow magnetic cell fractionation based on antigen expression level

Cell separation is important in medical and biological research and plays an increasingly important role in clinical therapy and diagnostics, such as rare cancer cell detection in blood. The immunomagnetic labeling of cells with antibodies conjugated to magnetic nanospheres gives rise to a proportional relationship between the number of magnetic nanospheres attached to the cell and the cell surface marker number. This enables the potential fractionation of cell populations by magnetophoretic mobility (MM). We exploit this feature with our apparatus, the Dipole Magnet Flow Fractionator (DMFF), which consists of an isodynamic magnetic field, an orthogonally-oriented thin ribbon of cell suspension in continuous sheath flow, and ten outlet flows. From a sample containing a 1:1 mixture of immunomagnetically labeled (label+) and unlabeled (label-) cells, we achieved an increase in enrichment of the label+ cell fraction with increasing outlet numbers in the direction of the magnetic field gradient (up to 10-fold). The total recovery of the ten outlet fractions was 90.0+/-7.7%. The mean MM of label+ cells increased with increasing outlet number by up to a factor of 2.3. The postulated proportionality between the number of attached magnetic beads and the number of cell surface markers was validated by comparison of MM measured by cell tracking velocimetry (CTV) with cell florescence intensity measured by flow cytometry.