title: Micro vapor bubble jet flow for safe and high-rate fluorescence-activated cell sorting.
abstract: Safe, high-rate and cost-effective cell sorting is important for clinical cell isolation. However, commercial fluorescence-activated cell sorters (FACS) are expensive and prone to aerosol-induced sample contamination. Here we report a microfluidic cell sorter allowing high rate and fully enclosed cell sorting. The sorter chip consists of an array of micro heating hotspots. Pulsed resistive heating in the hotspots produces numerous micro vapor bubbles with short duration, which gives rise to a rapid jet flow for cell sorting. With this method, we demonstrated high sorting rate comparable to commercial FACS and the significant enrichment of rare cancer cells. This vapor bubble based cell sorting method can be a powerful tool for contamination-free and affordable clinical cell sorting such as circulating tumor cell isolation and cancer cell therapy.
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be and Physics Department, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200d, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Koen
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7907-3410
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: de Wijs
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be.
authors.forename: Chengxun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dusa
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be and Physics Department, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200d, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Dries
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vercruysse
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be.
authors.forename: Bivragh
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Majeed
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be.
authors.forename: Deniz Sabuncuoglu
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Tezcan
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be.
authors.forename: Kamil
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Blaszkiewicz
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be.
authors.forename: Josine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Loo
authors.affiliation: imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. Chengxun.Liu@imec.be and Physics Department, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200d, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Liesbet
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lagae
mesh_terms: D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D004867:Equipment Design; D005434:Flow Cytometry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods