Cell Sorter Fields
The capability to sort, that is, to separate and isolate particular molecules, viruses, bacteria and mammalian cells, from a large background of complex mixtures, at very high throughput, purity and efficiency is a key biotechnological capability. Such bioseparation technologies have very broad applications ranging from molecular diagnositics to transplant therapies. Dielectrophoresis Activated Cell Sorter (DACS) technology combines a novel technique of molecular and cellular labeling with Microsytems technology to create a disposable, massively parallel, rare-cell sorting system. The physical mechanism is based on AC electrokinetics. Our approach is truly unique in two aspects: First, we label the cells with specifically engineered DEP tags, so that the differences in dielectric constants provide a large force of separation; Second, we leverage the massive parallelism - the hallmark of micro/nano fabrication technology - to create a multi-stage array of sorting chambers to exponentially enhance the performance in throughput, purity, and recovery simultaneously.