This article was published as part of the
From microfluidic application to
nanofluidic phenomena issue

Reviewing the latest advances in microfluidic and nanofluidic
research

Guest Editors Professors Albert van den Berg, Harold Craighead and Peidong Yang



Please take a look at the issue 3 table of contents to access
other reviews in this themed issue

Continuous separation of cells and particles in microfluidic systemsw
Andreas Lenshof and Thomas Laurell
Received 4th November 2009
First published as an Advance Article on the web 4th February 2010
DOI: 10.1039/b915999c
The progress in microfabrication and lab-on-a-chip technologies has been a major area
of development for new approaches to bioanalytics and integrated concepts for cell biology.
Fundamental advances in the development of elastomer based microfluidics have been driving
factors for making microfluidic technology available to a larger scientific community in the past
years. In line with this, microfluidic separation of cells and particles is currently developing
rapidly where key areas of interest are found in designing lab-on-a-chip systems that offer
controlled microenvironments for studies of fundamental cell biology. More recently industrial
interests are seen in the development of micro chip based flow cytometry technology both
for preclinical research and clinical diagnostics. This critical review outlines the most recent
developments in microfluidic technology for cell and particle separation in continuous flow
based systems. (130 references)
Introduction
Microfluidics is inherently a domain where high performance
cell and particle handling has proven to be very successful.
Some of the ruling technology platforms, which are industrial
and clinical standards for high quality cell processing, are
found in the fluorescence activated cell sorter (FACS) and in
the Coulter Counter. The FACS technology was pioneered by
Leonard Herzenberg and co-workers
1,2
at Stanford in the
late 1960-ies, rendering him the Kyoto Prize in 2006. The
importance of the FACS technology in modern biological and
medical research cannot be stressed enough. The key feature of
the FACS is that the sample flow is performed in a sheath flow
mode, where the cell suspension is coaxially laminated in the
centre of a buffer flow. By precise design of the sheath flow
conduits and by very accurate control of the two flow rates, a
highly laminar flow condition with eddy free fluidics is
obtained. This yields a precise and reproducible spatial location
of the cells in the fluid core and thus precision optics can be
employed for high speed detection of cells as they pass along
the sheath core. The combination of fluorescently labelled cell
Dept. Measurement Technology and Industrial Electrical Engineering,
Div. Nanobiotechnology, Lund University, 22100 Lund, Sweden.
E-mail: andreas.lenshof@elmat.lth.se, thomas.laurell@elmat.lth.se
w Part of the themed issue: From microfluidic application to nano-
fluidic phenomena.
Andreas Lenshof
Andreas Lenshof (ne´ Nilsson)
is currently a Post Doc at the
Laurell Group at Lund Uni-
versity. He received his PhD
at Lund University in 2009.
He has been working with
acoustic microfluidic systems
for the last 10 years in both
academia and industry. His
research is currently focused
on acoustic particle and cell
manipulation in biomedical
applications. He has received
several national innovation
awards, including the SKAPA
award 2003.
Thomas Laurell
Professor Thomas Laurell
holds a position as Professor
in Medical and Chemical
Microsensors and has since
1995 built his research activ-
ities around microtechnologies
in biomedicine (http://www.
elmat.lth.se/forskning/nanobio
technology_and_labonachip).
Laurell recently started a new
applied nanoproteomics labo-
ratory at the Biomedical
Centre in Lund, integrating
microfluidics and nanobiotechno-
logy developments with medical
research. This research is
focused on new microchip technologies in the area of bio-
medicine, biochemistry, nanobiotechnology with a focus on
disease biomarkers, diagnostic microsystems and miniaturised
sample processing. Laurell also leads the clinically oriented
research environment CellCARE, (www.cellcare.lth.se), which
targets chip based cell separation utilising ultrasonic standing
wave technology (acoustophoresis) as the fundamental mode of
separation.
This journal is
c
The Royal Society of Chemistry 2010 Chem.Soc.Rev., 2010, 39, 1203–1217 | 1203
CRITICAL REVIEW www.rsc.org/csr | Chemical Society Reviews