Negative selection of hematopoietic progenitor cells by continuous magnetophoresis

Nanoparticle Amplification Labeling for High-Performance Magnetic Cell Sorting

Magnetic cell sorting is an enabling tool for the isolation of specific cellular subpopulations for downstream applications and requires the cells to be labeled by a sufficient number of magnetic nanoparticles to leverage magnetophoresis for efficient separation. This requirement makes it challenging to target weakly expressed biomarkers. Here, we developed a new approach that selectively and efficiently amplifies the magnetic labeling on cells through sequentially connected antibodies and nanoparticles delivered to the surface or interior of the cell. Using this approach, we achieved amplification up to 100-fold for surface and intracellular markers. We also demonstrated the utility of this assay for enabling high-performance magnetic cell sorting when it is applied to the analysis of rare tumor cells for cancer diagnosis and the purification of transfected CAR T cells for immunotherapy. The data presented demonstrate a useful tool for the stratification of rare cell subpopulations.

Efficient recovery of potent tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes through quantitative immunomagnetic cell sorting

Adoptive cell therapies require the recovery and expansion of highly potent tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). However, TILs in tumours are rare and difficult to isolate efficiently, which hinders the optimization of therapeutic potency and dose. Here we show that a configurable microfluidic device can efficiently recover potent TILs from solid tumours by leveraging specific expression levels of target cell-surface markers. The device, which is sandwiched by permanent magnets, balances magnetic forces and fluidic drag forces to sort cells labelled with magnetic nanoparticles conjugated with antibodies for the target markers. Compared with conventional cell sorting, immunomagnetic cell sorting recovered up to 30-fold higher numbers of TILs, and the higher levels and diversity of the recovered TILs accelerated TIL expansion and enhanced their therapeutic potency. Immunomagnetic cell sorting also allowed us to identify and isolate potent TIL subpopulations, in particular TILs with moderate levels of CD39 (a marker of T-cell reactivity to tumours and T-cell exhaustion), which we found are tumour-specific, self-renewable and essential for the long-term success of adoptive cell therapies.

Basic Principles and Recent Advances in Magnetic Cell Separation

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.

A perspective on magnetic microfluidics: Towards an intelligent future

Magnetic microfluidics has been gradually recognized as an area of its own. Both conventional microfluidic platforms have incorporated magnetic actuation for microfluidic operation and microscale object manipulation. Nonetheless, there is still much room for improvement after decades of development. In this Perspective, we first provide a quick review of existing magnetic microfluidic platforms with a focus on the magnetic tools and actuation mechanisms. Next, we discuss several emerging technologies, including magnetic microrobots, additive manufacture, and artificial intelligence, and their potential application in the future development of magnetic microfluidics. We believe that these technologies can eventually inspire highly functional magnetic tools for microfluidic manipulation and coordinated microfluidic control at the system level, which eventually drives magnetic microfluidics into an intelligent system for automated experimentation.

Self-Assembly and sedimentation of 5 nm SPIONs using horizontal, high magnetic fields and gradients

Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) are employed in multiple applications, especially within medical and chemical engineering fields. However, their magnetic separation is very challenging as the magnetophoretic motion is hindered by thermal energy and viscous drag. Recent studies have addressed the recovery of SPIONs by a combination of cooperative magnetophoresis and sedimentation. Nevertheless, the effect of horizontal, high fields and gradients on the vertical sedimentation of SPIONs has not been described. In this work, we report, for the first time, the magnetically facilitated sedimentation of 5 nm particles by applying fields and gradients perpendicular to gravity. The magnetic field was generated by quadrupole magnetic sorters and the process was measured with time by tracking the concentration along the length of a channel contacting the 5 nm SPIONs within the quadrupole field. Our experimental data suggest that aggregates of 60-90 particles are formed in the system; thus, particle agglomeration by dipole-dipole interactions was promoted, and these clusters settled down as a result of gravitational forces. Multiple variables and parameters were evaluated, including the initial SPION concentration, the temperature, the magnetic field and gradient and operation time. It was found that the process was improved by decreasing the initial concentration and the temperature, but the magnitude of the magnetic field and gradient did not significantly affect the sedimentation. Finally, the separation process was rapid, with the systems reaching the equilibrium in approximately 20 minutes, which is a significant advantage in comparison to other systems that require longer times and larger particle sizes.

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.

Label-free enrichment of primary human skeletal progenitor cells using deterministic lateral displacement

Skeletal stem cells (SSCs) are present in bone marrow (BM) and offer great potential for bone regenerative therapies. However, in the absence of a unique marker, current sorting approaches remain challenging in the quest for simple strategies to deliver SSCs with consistent regeneration and differentiation capacities. Microfluidics offers the possibility to sort cells marker-free, based on intrinsic biophysical properties. Recent studies indicate that SSCs are stiffer than leukocytes and are contained within the larger cell fraction in BM. This paper describes the use of deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) to sort SSCs based on cell size and stiffness. DLD is a technology that uses arrays of micropillars to sort cells based on their diameter. Cell deformation within the device can change the cell size and affect sorting - here evidenced using human cell lines and by fractionation of expanded SSCs. Following sorting, SSCs remained viable and retained their capacity to form clonogenic cultures (CFU-F), indicative of stem cell potential. Additionally, larger BM cells showed enhanced capacity to form CFU-F. These findings support the theory that SSCs are more abundant within the larger BM cell fraction and that DLD, or other size-based approaches, could be used to provide enriched SSC populations with significant implications for stem cell research and translation to the clinic.

Circulating tumor cell isolation, culture, and downstream molecular analysis

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are a major contributor of cancer metastases and hold a promising prognostic significance in cancer detection. Performing functional and molecular characterization of CTCs provides an in-depth knowledge about this lethal disease. Researchers are making efforts to design devices and develop assays for enumeration of CTCs with a high capture and detection efficiency from whole blood of cancer patients. The existing and on-going research on CTC isolation methods has revealed cell characteristics which are helpful in cancer monitoring and designing of targeted cancer treatments. In this review paper, a brief summary of existing CTC isolation methods is presented. We also discuss methods of detaching CTC from functionalized surfaces (functional assays/devices) and their further use for ex-vivo culturing that aid in studies regarding molecular properties that encourage metastatic seeding. In the clinical applications section, we discuss a number of cases that CTCs can play a key role for monitoring metastases, drug treatment response, and heterogeneity profiling regarding biomarkers and gene expression studies that bring treatment design further towards personalized medicine.

Tessellated permanent magnet circuits for flow-through, open gradient separations of weakly magnetic materials

Emerging microfluidic-based cell assays favor label-free red blood cell (RBC) depletion. Magnetic separation of RBC is possible because of the paramagnetism of deoxygenated hemoglobin but the process is slow for open-gradient field configurations. In order to increase the throughput, periodic arrangements of the unit magnets were considered, consisting of commercially available Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets and soft steel flux return pieces. The magnet design is uniquely suitable for multiplexing by magnet tessellation, here meaning the tiling of the magnet assembly cross-sectional plane by periodic repetition of the magnet and the flow channel shapes. The periodic pattern of magnet magnetizations allows a reduction of the magnetic material per channel with minimal distortion of the field cylindrical symmetry inside the magnet apertures. A number of such magnet patterns are investigated for separator performance, size and economy with the goal of designing an open-gradient magnetic separator capable of reducing the RBC number concentration a hundred-fold in 1 mL whole blood per hour.

Skeletal stem cell isolation: A review on the state-of-the-art microfluidic label-free sorting techniques

Skeletal stem cells (SSC) are a sub-population of bone marrow stromal cells that reside in postnatal bone marrow with osteogenic, chondrogenic and adipogenic differentiation potential. SSCs reside only in the bone marrow and have organisational and regulatory functions in the bone marrow microenvironment and give rise to the haematopoiesis-supportive stroma. Their differentiation capacity is restricted to skeletal lineages and therefore the term SSC should be clearly distinguished from mesenchymal stem cells which are reported to exist in extra-skeletal tissues and, critically, do not contribute to skeletal development. SSCs are responsible for the unique regeneration capacity of bone and offer unlimited potential for application in bone regenerative therapies. A current unmet challenge is the isolation of homogeneous populations of SSCs, in vitro, with homogeneous regeneration and differentiation capacities. Challenges that limit SSC isolation include a) the scarcity of SSCs in bone marrow aspirates, estimated at between 1 in 10-100,000 mononuclear cells; b) the absence of specific markers and thus the phenotypic ambiguity of the SSC and c) the complexity of bone marrow tissue. Microfluidics provides innovative approaches for cell separation based on bio-physical features of single cells. Here we review the physical principles underlying label-free microfluidic sorting techniques and review their capacity for stem cell selection/sorting from complex (heterogeneous) samples.

Active bioparticle manipulation in microfluidic systems

The motion of bioparticles in a microfluidic environment can be actively controlled using several tuneable mechanisms, including hydrodynamic, electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis, magnetophoresis, acoustophoresis, thermophoresis and optical forces.

CD133 immunomagnetic separation: effectiveness of the method for CD133(+) isolation from umbilical cord blood

BACKGROUND AIMS

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is a rich source of stem cells, the characterization and isolation of which requires specific stem cell markers and reliable and reproducible protocols.

METHODS

We assessed CD133 isolation in 39 UCB samples, using a commercial immunomagnetic cell-sorting protocol, and, because of its non-reproducibility, we applied optimized protocols in an effort to improve it. These included extra-labeling of the selected CD133(+) subpopulation and indirect labeling using anti-phycoerythrin (PE) microbeads, goat anti-mouse IgG microbeads or a combination of both. The CD34 isolation was used as a control.

RESULTS

The mononuclear cell fraction expressed 0.53±0.06% CD133. The corresponding value for CD34 was 1.64±0.15%. Following the manufacturer's instructions, the CD34 isolation resulted in a population expressing 93±1.25% CD34 while, after the corresponding process, CD133(+) expression ranged from 10% to 85% (median 60%). The optimized isolation protocols did not result in improved CD133(+) yield. The variation in the purity of the CD133 population cannot be attributed to the different clones of CD133 used, because they do not cross-block, while other factors such as glycosylation, which could possibly interfere, do not apply in normal hematopoietic stem cells (HSC).

CONCLUSIONS

CD34 isolation by the immunomagnetic method results in highly pure CD34(+) population, while the efficient and reproducible yield of a pure CD133(+) population is not feasible. Therefore quantification of the positive cells should follow each isolation procedure in order to confirm the number of CD133(+) cells.

Emerging technologies for CTC detection based on depletion of normal cells

Properly conducted, an enrichment step can improve selectivity, sensitivity, yield, and most importantly, significantly reduce the time needed to isolate rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs). The enrichment process can be broadly categorized as positive selection versus negative depletion, or in some cases, a combination of both. We have developed a negative depletion CTC enrichment strategy that relies on the removal of normal cells using immunomagnetic separation in the blood of cancer patients. This method is based on the combination of magnetic and fluid forces in an axial, laminar flow in long cylinders placed in quadrupole magnets. Using this technology, we have successfully isolated CTCs from patients with breast carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. In contrast to a positive selection methodology, this approach provides an unbiased characterization of these cells, including markers associated with epithelial mesenchymal transition.

Separation and detection of rare cells in a microfluidic disk via negative selection

Cyto-analysis of rare cells often requires separation and detection with each procedure posing substantial challenges. This paper presents a disk-based microfluidic platform for both procedures via an immunomagnetic negative selection process. The microfluidic platform's unique features include a multistage magnetic gradient to trap labeled cells in double trapping areas, drainage of fluid to substantially shorten detection time, and a bin-like regions to capture target cells to facilitate a seamless enumeration process. Proof-of-concept was conducted using MCF7 as target rare cells (stained with anti-cytokeratin-FITC antibodies) spiked into Jurkat Clone E6-1 non-target cells (labeled with anti-CD45-PE and anti-PE BD magnetic beads). Then, mononuclear cells (MNC) from healthy blood donors were mixed with MCF7s, modeling rare cells, and tested in the disk. Results show a non-linear magnetic coupling effect of the multistage magnet substantially increased the trapping efficacy over that of a single magnet, contributing to the depletion rate of Jurkats, which reaches 99.96%. Detection time is extensively shortened by depletion of 95% of non-cell-containing fluid in the collection area. The average yield of detected MCF7 cells is near-constant 60 ± 10% over a wide range of rarity from 10(-3) to 10(-6) and this yield also holds for the MCF7/MNC complex mixture. Comparison with autoMACS and BD IMagnet separators revealed the average yield from the disk (60%) is superior to that of autoMACS (37.3%) and BD IMagnet (48.3%). The advantages of near-constant yield, roughly 30 min of operation, an acceptable level of cell loss, and potentially low cost system should aid in cyto-analysis of rare cells.

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.

Utility of magnetic cell separation as a molecular sperm preparation technique

Assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) have become the treatment of choice in many cases of infertility; however, the current success rates of these procedures remain suboptimal. Programmed cell death (apoptosis) most likely contributes to failed ART and to the decrease in sperm quality after cryopreservation. There is a likelihood that some sperm selected for ART will display features of apoptosis despite their normal appearance, which may be partially responsible for the low fertilization and implantation rates seen with ART. One of the features of apoptosis is the externalization of phosphatidylserine (PS) residues, which are normally present on the inner leaflet of the sperm plasma membrane. Colloidal superparamagnetic microbeads ( approximately 50 nm in diameter) conjugated with annexin V bind to PS and are used to separate dead and apoptotic spermatozoa by magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS). Cells with externalized PS will bind to these microbeads, whereas nonapoptotic cells with intact membranes do not bind and could be used during ARTs. We have conducted a series of experiments to investigate whether the MACS technology could be used to improve ART outcomes. Our results clearly indicate that integrating MACS as a part of sperm preparation techniques will improve semen quality and cryosurvival rates by eliminating apoptotic sperm. Nonapoptotic spermatozoa prepared by MACS display higher quality in terms of routine sperm parameters and apoptosis markers. The higher sperm quality is represented by an increased oocyte penetration potential and cryosurvival rates. Thus, the selection of nonapoptotic spermatozoa by MACS should be considered to enhance ART success rates.

A novel high throughput immunomagnetic cell sorting system for potential clinical scale depletion of T cells for allogeneic stem cell transplantation

OBJECTIVE

To develop an immunomagnetic cell separation system for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantations, which can achieve a high level of T-cell depletion (at least 4.0 log(10)), high level of recovery of hematopoietic stem cells (>90%), with a high throughput (>10(6) cells/second).

METHODS

Peripheral blood leukocytes (PBLs) from buffy coats were spiked with CD34-expressing cells (KG1a) to mimic a leukaphoresis product containing stimulated HSCs. T cells were labeled with anti-CD3(+) Dynabeads and separated in a quadrupole magnetic cell sorter (QMS). The performance of the system with respect to T-cell depletion and recovery of non-T cells and spiked KG1a was determined using four-color, flow cytometry analysis, with the aid of Trucount cell-concentration calibration beads. Limiting dilution assays were also performed to quantify the log(10) depletion of clonable T cells.

RESULTS

While the general performance of the QMS system is governed by proven theoretical principles, significant system variability exist, not all of which can be explained by our current understanding. Consequently, a factorial design was employed, guided by JMP software, to optimize the labeling conditions and operation of the QMS focused on maximizing the depletion of T cell, and recovery of unlabeled cells including KG1a cells. From these studies, an optimized, no wash, immunomagnetic labeling protocol and optimized QMS operating conditions were developed. For an average initial cell concentration of 1.7 x 10(8) total cells, an average 3.96 +/- 0.33 log(10) depletion (range, 3.53-4.34) of CD3(+)CD45(+) cells with a mean 99.43% +/- 4.23% recovery of CD34(+)CD45(+) cells (range, 94.38-104.90%) was achieved at a sorting speed of 10(6) cells/s (n = 6). Limiting dilution assays on the T-cell depleted fractions, which gave a log(10) depletion of 3.51 for the clonable T cells.

CONCLUSION

We suggest that this system will provide superior performance with respect to T-cell depletion and CD34(+) recovery for clinical allogeneic bone marrow transplants. Ongoing studies, on a clinical scale, are being conducted to demonstrate this claim.