Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2012;7(5):e37619. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037619. Epub 2012 May 29.
Progress in cardiac cell replacement therapies and tissue engineering critically depends on our ability to isolate functional cardiomyocytes (CMs) from heterogeneous cell mixtures. Label-free enrichment of cardiomyocytes is desirable for future clinical application of cell based products. Taking advantage of the physical properties of CMs, a microfluidic system was designed to separate CMs from neonatal rat heart tissue digest based on size using the principles of deterministic lateral displacement (DLD). For the first time, we demonstrate enrichment of functional CMs up to 91 ± 2.4% directly from the digested heart tissue without any pre-treatment or labeling. Enriched cardiomyocytes remained viable after sorting and formed contractile cardiac patches in 3-dimensional culture. The broad significance of this work lies in demonstrating functional cell enrichment from the primary tissue digest leading directly to the creation of the engineered tissue.
心脏细胞替代疗法和组织工程的进展在很大程度上取决于我们从异质细胞混合物中分离功能正常的心肌细胞（CMs）的能力。无标记的心肌细胞富集对于基于细胞的产品的未来临床应用是可取的。利用 CMs 的物理特性，设计了一种微流控系统，根据大小利用定向横向位移（DLD）的原理从基于新生大鼠心脏组织的消化物中分离 CMs。我们首次展示了在不进行任何预处理或标记的情况下，从消化的心脏组织中直接富集功能正常的 CMs，纯度高达 91±2.4%。经过分选后，富集的心肌细胞仍然保持活力，并在三维培养中形成收缩性心脏贴片。这项工作的广泛意义在于证明了可以从原始组织消化物中直接进行功能性细胞富集，从而直接构建工程组织。
