Large-scale immuno-magnetic cell sorting of T cells based on a self-designed high-throughput system for potential clinical application

In this contribution, we designed four types of immuno-magnetic nanoparticles for separation of different T cells (CD3(+), CD4(+), CD8(+) and CD14(+) T cells), and we established a new large-scale immunomagnetic cell sorting procedure to achieve an enrichment of particular T cells using our designed autoIMACS device. This device could achieve recyclable large-scale cell sorting, for which the throughput of the system reached similar to 4000 mL and the maximum cell capacity was 4 x 10(10). The collected cells were analyzed by flow cytometry and visual cytology data, and the effective selection rates of CD3(+), CD4(+), CD8(+) and CD14(+) T cells were 79.3%, 74.1%, 57.1% and 67.9%, respectively. The sorted CD8(+) T cells still retained good cytotoxic activity against specific cells. In addition, the sorted T cells can also be further incubated in vitro and proliferated, and even could be infused back into patients for immunotherapy in the near future.