Physical procedures for the separation of blood and marrow cells.

Most of the questions being asked in contemporary experimental hematology research can be framed in terms of the properties of the individual cells in the system and the interactions among those cells. Physical separation procedures are among the most powerful methods for the purification of homogeneous cell populations, and during the past decades, thousands of reports have described the separation of many different cells using these techniques. Theoretical and technical improvements have been rapidly transferred from the research laboratory into the construction of blood cell separation machines, which have proved of exceptional support in the practice of clinical hematology.