Development of a High-Throughput Magnetic Cytometer for Single Cell Sorting

Project Summary This Small Business Innovation Research Phaseproject will develop a novel magnetic cytometer to rapidly isolateidentify and sort single intact and viable cells from heterogeneous cell population for single cell analysisSingle cell analysis is the key to investigate fundamental biological principles behind cell heterogeneity and disease evolutionSorting of single cells from heterogeneous population has been essential to life science and clinical research such as monoclonal antibody production and cell line developmentRecently there is a strong demand from single cell analysis on rare cellssuch as circulating tumor cellsCTCscirculating fetal cellsstem cellsantigen specific Tor B cellsand disseminated tumor cellsDTCsHoweverconventional single cell sorting technology has limited capabilities to sort single cells from rare cell populationFor instancemicromanipulation and serial dilution are time consuming and low throughputfluorescent activated cell sortingFACSsuffers from target cell loss and only applies to abundant cell populationsIn additioncurrent technique used for rare cell identification requires cell fixation which causes loss of cell viability and thus prohibits many downstream molecular and functional analysisThereforethe development of a highthroughput cytometer for single intact cell sorting will have wide applications in bioscience research as well as potential clinical benefitThe ultimate goal of this research is to develop an easy to use high throughput cell sorter for single cell analysis in basic and clinical research Project Narrative This SBIR Phase I project aims to develop novel magnetic cytometer to rapidly isolateidentify and sort single intact and viable cells from heterogeneous cell populationThe project will provide a powerful tool for single cell analysis and have a broad impact in both basic research and clinical applications