Continuous Flow Microfluidic Bioparticle Concentrator

A high-throughput microfluidic approach for 1000-fold leukocyte reduction of platelet-rich plasma

Leukocyte reduction of donated blood products substantially reduces the risk of a number of transfusion-related complications. Current 'leukoreduction' filters operate by trapping leukocytes within specialized filtration material, while allowing desired blood components to pass through. However, the continuous release of inflammatory cytokines from the retained leukocytes, as well as the potential for platelet activation and clogging, are significant drawbacks of conventional 'dead end' filtration. To address these limitations, here we demonstrate our newly-developed 'controlled incremental filtration' (CIF) approach to perform high-throughput microfluidic removal of leukocytes from platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in a continuous flow regime. Leukocytes are separated from platelets within the PRP by progressively syphoning clarified PRP away from the concentrated leukocyte flowstream. Filtrate PRP collected from an optimally-designed CIF device typically showed a ~1000-fold (i.e. 99.9%) reduction in leukocyte concentration, while recovering >80% of the original platelets, at volumetric throughputs of ~1 mL/min. These results suggest that the CIF approach will enable users in many fields to now apply the advantages of microfluidic devices to particle separation, even for applications requiring macroscale flowrates.

A novel viscoelastic-based ferrofluid for continuous sheathless microfluidic separation of nonmagnetic microparticles

Separation of microparticles has found broad applications in biomedicine, industry and clinical diagnosis. In a conventional aqueous ferrofluid, separation of microparticles usually employs a sheath flow or two offset magnets to confine particle streams for downstream particle sorting. This complicates the fluid control, device fabrication, and dilutes the particle sample. In this work, we propose and develop a novel viscoelastic ferrofluid by replacing the Newtonian base medium of the conventional ferrofluid with non-Newtonian poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) aqueous solution. The properties of both viscoelastic 3D focusing and negative magnetophoresis of the viscoelastic ferrofluid were verified and investigated. By employing the both properties in a serial manner, continuous and sheathless separation of nonmagnetic particles based on particle size has been demonstrated. This novel viscoelastic ferrofluid is expected to bring more flexibility and versatility to the design and functionality in microfluidic devices.

Microdevice for plasma separation from whole human blood using bio-physical and geometrical effects

In this research work, we present a simple and efficient passive microfluidic device for plasma separation from pure blood. The microdevice has been fabricated using conventional photolithography technique on a single layer of polydimethylsiloxane, and has been extensively tested on whole blood and enhanced (upto 62%) hematocrit levels of human blood. The microdevice employs elevated dimensions of about 100 μm; such elevated dimensions ensure clog-free operation of the microdevice and is relatively easy to fabricate. We show that our microdevice achieves almost 100% separation efficiency on undiluted blood in the flow rate range of 0.3 to 0.5 ml/min. Detailed biological characterization of the plasma obtained from the microdevice is carried out by testing: proteins by ultra-violet spectrophotometric method, hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) hormone, and conducting random blood glucose test. Additionally, flow cytometry study has also been carried on the separated plasma. These tests attest to the high quality of plasma recovered. The microdevice developed in this work is an outcome of extensive experimental research on understanding the flow behavior and separation phenomenon of blood in microchannels. The microdevice is compact, economical and effective, and is particularly suited in continuous flow operations.

A disposable, roll-to-roll hot-embossed inertial microfluidic device for size-based sorting of microbeads and cells

Inertial microfluidics has been a highly active area of research in recent years for high-throughput focusing and sorting of synthetic and biological microparticles. However, existing inertial microfluidic devices always rely on microchannels with high-aspect-ratio geometries (channel width w < channel height h) and small cross-sections (w×h < 50 × 100 μm(2)). Such deep and small structures increase fabrication difficulty and can limit manufacturing by large-scale and high-throughput production approaches such as roll-to-roll (R2R) hot embossing. In this work, we present a novel inertial microfluidic device using only a simple and low-aspect-ratio (LAR) straight microchannel (w > h) to achieve size-based sorting of microparticles and cells. The simple LAR geometry of the device enables successful high-throughput fabrication using R2R hot embossing. With optimized flow conditions and channel dimensions, we demonstrate continuous sorting of a mixture of 15 μm and 10 μm diameter microbeads with >97% sorting efficiency using the low-cost and disposable R2R chip. We further demonstrate size-based sorting of bovine white blood cells, demonstrating the ability to process real cellular samples in our R2R chip. We envision that this R2R hot-embossed inertial microfluidic chip will serve as a powerful yet low-cost and disposable tool for size-based sorting of synthetic microparticles in industrial applications or cellular samples in cell biology research and clinical diagnostics.

Microfluidic techniques for high throughput single cell analysis

The microfabrication of microfluidic control systems and the development of increasingly sensitive molecular amplification tools have enabled the miniaturization of single cells analytical platforms. Only recently has the throughput of these platforms increased to a level at which populations can be screened at the single cell level. Techniques based upon both active and passive manipulation are now capable of discriminating between single cell phenotypes for sorting, diagnostic or prognostic applications in a variety of clinical scenarios. The introduction of multiphase microfluidics enables the segmentation of single cells into biochemically discrete picoliter environments. The combination of these techniques are enabling a class of single cell analytical platforms within great potential for data driven biomedicine, genomics and transcriptomics.

Fundamentals and applications of inertial microfluidics: a review

In the last decade, inertial microfluidics has attracted significant attention and a wide variety of channel designs that focus, concentrate and separate particles and fluids have been demonstrated. In contrast to conventional microfluidic technologies, where fluid inertia is negligible and flow remains almost within the Stokes flow region with very low Reynolds number (Re ≪ 1), inertial microfluidics works in the intermediate Reynolds number range (~1 < Re < ~100) between Stokes and turbulent regimes. In this intermediate range, both inertia and fluid viscosity are finite and bring about several intriguing effects that form the basis of inertial microfluidics including (i) inertial migration and (ii) secondary flow. Due to the superior features of high-throughput, simplicity, precise manipulation and low cost, inertial microfluidics is a very promising candidate for cellular sample processing, especially for samples with low abundant targets. In this review, we first discuss the fundamental kinematics of particles in microchannels to familiarise readers with the mechanisms and underlying physics in inertial microfluidic systems. We then present a comprehensive review of recent developments and key applications of inertial microfluidic systems according to their microchannel structures. Finally, we discuss the perspective of employing fluid inertia in microfluidics for particle manipulation. Due to the superior benefits of inertial microfluidics, this promising technology will still be an attractive topic in the near future, with more novel designs and further applications in biology, medicine and industry on the horizon.

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.