A microfluidic device for electronic cell surface expression profiling using magnetophoresis

Membrane antigen expression analysis of a cell population is routinely needed in clinical applications and basic biology research. In this work, we introduce a microfluidic device that aims to electronically profile the surface antigen density in a given cell population as a low-cost alternative to fluorescent-activated cell sorter. By coupling magnetophoretic cell sorting with an array of code-multiplexed resistive pulse sensors, our device can electrically quantify magnetic deflection of cells in the sorting process. Experiments using human breast cancer cell line demonstrate the utility of this device in the analysis of heterogeneous cell populations.