Extracting white blood cells from blood on microfluidics platform: a review of isolation techniques and working mechanisms

Abstract

AbstractSelective isolation of human blood cells has numerous applications in disease diagnostic, prognostics, drug discovery, and drug delivery. In particular, isolation of white blood cells (WBCs) is required for the detection of various diseases such as leukemia, human immunodeficiency virus infection, Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), and cancers. Although the conventional methods of centrifugation and flow cytometry are broadly employed to isolate WBCs in clinical practice, they experience several limitations such as the requirement of the large volume of samples and reagents, trained personnel, large setup, and have an adverse effect on the quality of cells. In contrast, microfluidics-based methods have appeared as a superior approach of cells isolation with advantages such as low cost, ease to operate, compact in size, and requiring a lower sample volume. This review focuses on various microfluidics techniques for isolating WBCs from blood. Here, we have discussed the working mechanism of different microfluidics techniques, microdevice designs, and their performance parameters to isolate WBCs. In addition, a brief description of the numerous advantages and limitations of the existing microdevices and their future prospects aiming to develop an affordable, user-friendly point-of-care solution is provided.