Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatment for specific cancers. CAR T-cells are manufactured ex vivo using T-cells derived from patients. Recent clinical trials reported a very high level of efficacy as well as complete remission rates (70%–93%) for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients. However, there have also been reports of significant adverse effects resulting from the contamination of T-cells derived from patients with existing cancer cells during manufacturing. The accidental transfection of cancer cells with CAR genes provides the cancer cells with immunity from CAR T-cells. As a result, genetically modified cancer cells that express the CAR molecules grow into secondary tumors. This significantly undermines the great benefits offered by CAR T-cell therapy. The removal of cancer cells before gene transfer using cell purification methods can address this issue. However, traditional cell purification methods such as fluorescence-activated cell separation and magnetic-activated cell separation have proven to be unsuitable for high-purity T-cell purification. To address this issue, we investigated the utility, in microfluidic channels, of dielectrophoretic cell purification, which is a label-free high-throughput cell purification method. When we conducted the experiments with primary T-cell (CD8⁺) samples contaminated with cultured acute lymphoblastic leukemia and chronic myelogenous leukemia cells, we found that dielectrophoresis could be used to purify cell samples and achieve 100% purity with high cell viability (greater than 90%).

嵌合抗原受体（CAR）T细胞疗法是美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）批准的针对特定癌症的疗法。CAR T细胞离体生产使用源自患者的T细胞 最近的临床试验报告说，急性淋巴细胞白血病（ALL）患者的疗效水平很高，完全缓解率（70％–93％）。但是，也有报道说，在制造过程中，由于存在癌细胞的患者产生的T细胞受到污染，因此产生了显着的不良影响。用CAR基因意外转染癌细胞可使癌细胞免受CAR T细胞的免疫。结果，表达CAR分子的转基因癌细胞生长为继发性肿瘤。这大大破坏了CAR T细胞疗法的巨大益处。使用细胞纯化方法去除基因转移之前的癌细胞可以解决这个问题。然而，事实证明，传统的细胞纯化方法（例如荧光激活的细胞分离和磁激活的细胞分离）不适用于高纯度T细胞纯化。为了解决这个问题，我们研究了微电泳通道中介电泳细胞纯化的实用性，这是一种无标记的高通量细胞纯化方法。当我们用原代T细胞（CD8⁺）被培养的急性淋巴细胞白血病和慢性粒细胞性白血病细胞污染的样品，我们发现介电电泳可用于纯化细胞样品并获得100％的纯度和高细胞活力（大于90％）。