Continuous Flow Cell Sorter Based On Dielectrophoresis

Separation of cancer cells from the other biological cells can be useful for clinical cancer diagnosis and cancer treatment. Dielectrophoresis in microfluidics can be a useful method to separate and enrich cancer cells. However, high throughput is required in order to achieve high sensitivity of detection. In this presentation, conventional dielectrophoresis (c-DEP) is used in a microfluidic chip to manipulate and collect colorectal cancer HCT116 cell, which is doped with Human Embryonic Kidney 293 cells (HEK 293). Several methods are applied to increase the throughput. Top and bottom electrode pairs, narrow electrodes distance are used to increase electric field. Staged electrode pair is also applied. It is found that these methods can increase the throughput. Quantification and comparison of the enrichment enhancement are presented.