Creation of highly functional thermal and fluids mechanism for micro cell processing

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The objective of the present study is to develop a novel micro cell processing system for efficient mixing, labeling, sorting and transporting of cells in micro channels by using heat and fluid phenomena inherent in microscale. As a specific application, regenerative medicine using adult somatic stem cells is assumed, and cell sorting systems that can efficiently extract rare cells from cell mixture have been developed. More specifically, high-precision numerical scheme and a novel imaging methods have been developed for understanding cell/particle motions in micro channels. Specific design guiding principle for cell sorting system that can be used for future clinical application is obtained by development of MEMS fabrication technologies using new biocompatible materials and experimental evaluation of the prototype micro cell sorters.A lamination micro mixer and an immunomagnetic cell sorting system using the mixers have been developed. We found that the throughput can be higher than previous micro cell sorters, and that processing relatively-large amount of cell samples needed for clinical use is possible when the numbering-up approach is adopted. In addition, novel adhesion-based cell sorting systems that utilize deceleration of cell rolling by antigen-antibody interaction on the wall has been proposed, and its prototype is developed. With this system, one can eliminate labeling of the target cells. We also propose a new immobilization method of antibody with amino-functionalized parylene.Conventional cell sorting/incubation process is time consuming and requires a long time and much human resources. Cell sorting methods proposed in the present study based on characteristics of microscale heat and fluid flows will reduce cost and analysis time of cell sorting, and eventually make contribution to advances of regenerativie medicine.