Separation, Isolation and Enrichment of Cells from a Complex Sample Using Insulator-Based Dielectrophoresis

The analysis of complex biological samples is an important challenge in many bioanalytical and clinical applications. The leading microfluidic technique, known as insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP), has been successfully employed in the past as lab-on-a-chip systems, and has been proven highly useful in the clinical diagnostics area due to its rapid yield of results. Nonetheless, there a need to further analyze if these systems can adequately separate samples more closely related to those found naturally in biological settings, such as blood samples.  The present study will focus on the selective capture, enrichment, and separation of intact biological cells from samples containing cell debris and cell organelles. The capacity of this iDEP system is evaluated for the analysis of samples containing low concentrations of the desired intact cells in mixtures with high concentrations of cell lysate.