Ultra-High Throughput, High Purity Stem Cell Isolation

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is considerable evidence for the application of transplantation of Hematopoietic and Mesenchymal Stem Cells in the treatment of a wide range of cancers including lymphoma, neuroblastoma, and multiple myeloma. In addition, HSC/MSC therapies can be applied to reconstitute the immune system, regenerate damaged tissues, and deliver genes to repair damaged cells for many auto-immune diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematosis. One of the major roadblocks in the successful application of transplant treatments is the difficulty in rapidly obtaining a pure sample of stem cells in the harvested sample. This ultimate objective of our research is the development of an ultra-high throughput high-purity cell sorter, Gigasort, for stem cell harvesting. The cell sorter consists of several parallel microfluidic channels that combine to produce throughput that is expected to be at least 10x that of current generation cell sorters in practice, without compromising sample purity. The current proposal is aimed at developing a multichannel sorter test bed that is extendable in the number of parallel channels used. We will build the test bed and experimentally measure the sorting performance for fluorescent beads and cells, including cells harvested from blood.