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 immuno-magnetic cell sorting procedure to achieve an enrichment of particular T cells using our designed auto-IMACS device. This device could achieve recyclable large-scale cell sorting, for which the throughput of the system reached ∼4000 mL and the maximum cell capacity was 4 × 10¹⁰. 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.