Flow through, immunomagnetic cell separation.

A brief, process-oriented overview of immunologically based cell separation technology is presented. In addition, the design and preliminary experimental data of two unique flow-through immunomagnetic cell separation devices are presented. The first design is based on a dipole magnetic field, while the second design is basis on a quadrupole magnetic field. The dipole design can "fractionate" an inlet, magnetically labeled, cell stream into different outlet streams on the basis of the degree to which the cell is immunomagnetically labeled. The quadrupole separator splits an inlet, immunomagnetically labeled, cell stream into two outlet streams in which the purity, recovery, and potentially the degree to which the cells are immunomagnetically labeled is controlled by the flow rates in the inlet and outlet flows. A 99% purity and 86% recovery have been achieved with this system. Some distinct advantages of these two systems are the potential of high purity, recovery, and throughput at a cost which is potentially significantly lower than current, comparable technologies.