Taking blood apart by sound

Introduction

Separation of blood components is of high importance in healthcare and often requires fractionation of blood into its subcomponents by centrifugation. There are several scenarios that call for improved resolution:

Scenarios for Improved Resolution

1. When blood is drawn from a donor and a specific cell type is extracted while returning remaining blood components.
2. In cancer immunotherapy where T-cells are isolated from the blood and then genetically reprogrammed to be re-infused in the patient, where they seek out and destroy cancer cells.
3. Circulating tumor cells, which are involved in the process of formation of metastases in cancer patients, can be detected and monitored by extracting cancer cells in large volumes of blood.
4. Improving the quality and reducing the number of manual procedures in diagnostic instrumentation that analyzes blood.

Limitations of Centrifugation

Centrifugation has the fundamental drawback of having rotating parts, thereby taking up space and being difficult to implement for flow-through processing. This is desirable both for integration in analytical equipment and for processing blood for continuous re-infusion into a person.

Alternative Approach

We will investigate an alternative to centrifugation wherein blood components are separated by a sound field. Cells will be separated based on differences in density and size while flowing through an acoustic separator module. Recent ERC-funded research indicates that this approach is feasible, but three scientific questions have been identified with fundamental impact on the commercial potential of this technology:

1. How selectively can sub-groups of blood cells be separated by acoustic separation?
2. Can acoustic separation be scaled for high throughput applications?
3. Can acoustic separation affect blood cells?

Project Goals

To address these questions, my team will design and build two prototype systems for whole blood processing and evaluate the quality and throughput of the separation, with the ultimate goal of bringing this technology to the market for the benefit of society.