Biology subjects

Sharma, O.

Publications and source records attributed to Sharma, O..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2017

Platelet enrichment from whole blood in a clog-free microfluidic radial pillar device (RAPID)

Pillar-based passive microfluidic devices combine the advantages of simple designs, low device footprint, and high selectivity for size-based separation of blood cells. Most of these device designs have been validated with dilute blood samples. Handling whole blood in pillar-based devices is extremely challenging due to clogging. The high proportion of cells (particularly red blood cells) in blood, the varying sizes and stiffness of the different blood cells, and the tendency of the cells to aggregate lead to clogging of the pillars within a short period. We recently reported a radial pillar device (RAPID) design for contin-uous and high throughput separation of multi-sized rigid polystyrene particles in a single experiment. In this manuscript, we have given detailed guidelines to modify the design of RAPID for any application with deformable objects (e.g. cells). We have adapted RAPID to work with blood samples directly without any pre-processing steps. We were successful in operating the device with whole blood for almost 6 hours, which is difficult to achieve with most pillar-based devices. Finally, we demonstrated up to ~ 60-fold enrichment of platelets as an illustration of the improved device design. Whole blood pillar-based platelet clog-free RAPID

physiology↗

bioRxiv2017

A radial pillar device (RAPID) for continuous and high-throughput separation of multi-sized particles

Pillar-based microfluidic sorting devices are preferred for isolation of rare cells due to their simple designs and passive operation. Dead-end pillar filters can efficiently capture large rare cells, such as, circulating tumor cells (CTCs), nucleated red blood cells (NRBCs), etc., but they get clogged easily. Cross flow filters are preferred for smaller rare particles (e.g. separating bacteria from blood), but they need additional buffer inlets and a large device footprint for efficient operation. We have designed a new microparticle separation device i.e. Radial Pillar Device (RAPID) that combines the advantages of dead-end and cross flow filters. RAPID can simultaneously isolate both large and small rare particles from a mixed population, while functioning for several hours without clogging. We have achieved simultaneous separation of 10{micro}m and 2{micro}m polystyrene particles from a mixture of 2 {micro}m, 7 {micro}m and 10 {micro}m beads. RAPID achieved average separation purity and recovery in excess of 90%. The throughput of our device ( 3ml/min) is 10 and 100 times higher compared to cross flow and dead-end filters respectively, thereby justifying the name RAPID.

bioengineering↗