Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0921, USA.
Biomicrofluidics. 2012 Jul 13;6(3):34102. doi: 10.1063/1.4732800. Print 2012 Sep.
Separating live and dead cells is critical to the diagnosis of early stage diseases and to the efficacy test of drug screening, etc. This work demonstrates a novel microfluidic approach to dielectrophoretic separation of yeast cells by viability. It exploits the cell dielectrophoresis that is induced by the inherent electric field gradient at the reservoir-microchannel junction to selectively trap dead yeast cells and continuously separate them from live ones right inside the reservoir. This approach is therefore termed reservoir-based dielectrophoresis (rDEP). It has unique advantages as compared to existing dielectrophoretic approaches such as the occupation of zero channel space and the elimination of any mechanical or electrical parts inside microchannels. Such an rDEP cell sorter can be readily integrated with other components into lab-on-a-chip devices for applications to biomedical diagnostics and therapeutics.
分离活细胞和死细胞对于早期疾病的诊断和药物筛选的疗效测试等至关重要。本工作展示了一种新颖的微流控方法，通过细胞活力进行酵母细胞的介电泳分离。它利用储液器-微通道交界处固有的电场梯度诱导的细胞介电泳，选择性地捕获死酵母细胞，并在储液器内部将其与活酵母细胞连续分离。因此，这种方法被称为基于储液器的介电泳（rDEP）。与现有的介电泳方法相比，它具有独特的优势，例如占用零通道空间和消除微通道内部的任何机械或电气部件。这种 rDEP 细胞分选器可以很容易地与其他组件集成到微流控芯片设备中，用于生物医学诊断和治疗应用。
