Cell detachment and label-free cell sorting using modulated surface acoustic waves (SAW) in droplet-based microfluidics

摘要

We present a droplet-based surface acoustic wave (SAW) system designed toviably detach biological cells from a surface and sort cell types based ondifferences in adhesion strength (adhesion contrast), without the need to labelcells with molecular markers. The system uses modulated SAW to generatepulsatile flows in the droplets and efficiently detach the cells, therebyminimizing SAW excitation power and exposure time. As a proof-of-principle, thesystem is shown to efficiently sort HEK 293 from A7r5 cells based on adhesioncontrast. Results are obtained in minutes with sorting purity and efficiencyreaching 97 % and 95 %, respectively.