The standard analysis technique for cell sorting, flow cytometry, requires centralized facilities such as tertiary Medical Centers. In the U.S. alone, more than 65 million people live in medically underserved areas, many of which need access to diagnostic procedures for proper management of their disease. The goal of this research is to develop a cell sorting technique that can be done in low-resource settings at a decreased cost to the medical organization and the patient. By combining inkjet printing technology and magnetic labeling of cells it is possible to obtain accurate cell counts needing only a regular optical microscope. Mouse CD4+ lymphocytes were attached to micron sized magnetic beads and printed through a modified, commercial inkjet printer. The labeled cells were attached to a glass slide covering a permanent magnet. The cell counts for this study were obtained by use of regular and inverted optical microscopes and NIS-Elements AR imaging software. Comparisons to flow cytometry will be presented. This novel technique may improve upon existing technologies by reducing costs of training personnel, acquisition and maintenance of instrumentation, and time to conduct analysis
Sylvia Natividad, Maria T. Arevalo, Julio Rincon, Maria Yanez, Mingtao Zeng, Thomas Boland, "Magnetic Cell Separation by Inkjet Printing for Disease Monitoring" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP27), 2011, pp 628 - 631, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2011.27.1.art00057_2