Microtechnology for Cell Manipulation and Sorting

This book delves into the recent developments in the microscale and microfluidic technologies that allow manipulation at the single and cell aggregate level. Expert authors review the dominant mechanisms that manipulate and sort biological structures, making this a state-of-the-art overview of conventional cell sorting techniques, the principles of microfluidics, and of microfluidic devices. All chapters highlight the benefits and drawbacks of each technique they discuss, which include magnetic, electrical, optical, acoustic, gravity/sedimentation, inertial, deformability, and aqueous two-phase systems as the dominant mechanisms utilized by microfluidic devices to handle biological samples. Each chapter explains the physics of the mechanism at work, and reviews common geometries and devices to help readers decide the type of style of device required for various applications. This book is appropriate for graduate-level biomedical engineering and analytical chemistry students, as well as engineers and scientists working in the biotechnology industry.

Wonhee Lee, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Nanoscience and Technology at KAIST, a public research university located in South Korea. Wonhee’s research focuses on the development and application of microfluidic cell calorimeters for cell biology, and on microfluidic inertial self-assembly. Peter Tseng, PhD, is currently a postdoc at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a PhD in biomedical engineering, and his research focuses on cell manipulation, magnets, and MEMS. Dino Di Carlo, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the department of Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering interdepartmental graduate program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among other honors he was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development award and the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2012, the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award in 2011, and received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award and Coulter Translational Research Award in 2010.