New study unveils novel technology for plasma separation using magnets


Date:
August 11, 2021
Source:
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology(UNIST)
Summary:
A recent study has unveiled a hemolysis-free and highly efficient
blood plasma separation platform.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has recently unveiled
a hemolysis- free and highly efficient blood plasma separation
platform. Published in the May 2021 issue of Small, this breakthrough
has been led by Professor Joo H.

Kang and his research team in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
at UNIST. The research team expects that the new technology will greatly improve the accuracy of point-of-care blood tests, which has shown the increased demand recently.


==========================================================================
In their study, the research team used diamagnetic repulsion of blood
cells to separate blood cells and blood plasma. Once superparamagnetic
iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) are supplemented to whole blood, the
SPIONs turn the blood plasma into a paramagnetic condition, and thus,
all blood cells are repelled by magnets. The research team collected hemolysis-free plasma without loss of plasma proteins, platelets,
and exosomes.

"Many efforts have been made to develop various blood plasma separation methods. However, there always have been limitations, such as dilution
of blood, blood cell impurity in plasma, and hemolysis," noted Professor
Kang.

"Our approach overcame these unmet challenges and we could provide
a huge impact on in vitro diagnosis once this platform is translated
into a commercial point-of-care device." The developed blood plasma
separation method achieved 100% of the plasma purity and 83.3% of
the plasma volume recovery rate without noticeable hemolysis or loss
of proteins in blood plasma, which was elusive with the conventional
plasma separation devices. Moreover, this method enabled the greater
recovery of bacterial DNA from the infected blood than centrifugation
and immunoassays in whole blood without prior plasma separation.

"We have overcome the limitations of a filter-based blood plasma
separation method that potentially could induce hemolysis or a
microfluidic chip-based plasma separation method that has the problems
in a plasma recovery rate and purity," says Research Professor Seyong
Kwon in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST, the first
co-author of the study.

The research team also developed an ultra-compact, low-cost,
high-precision diagnostic chip that can test blood directly without plasma separation. The diagnostic chip detected prostate-specific antigen (PSA) protein, a biomarker for prostate cancer diagnosis.

The developed blood plasma separation method also allowed them to collect platelet rich plasma (PRP). This capability is important because recent
studies have revealed that platelets could be used as a biomarker
for diagnosis of cancer or diabetes. "Unlike a complex process of
the conventional centrifugation method to collect PRP, our method can
simply collect PRP by just tuning flow rates," says Jieung Oh, the first co-author of the study.

This study has been jointly carried out by Min Seok Lee in the Department
of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST, together with Professor Joonwoo Jeong
and Professor Eujin Um from the Department of Physics at UNIST. This work
has been supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education,
as well as Young Researcher Program by the Ministry of Science and ICT
(MSIT).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Ulsan_National_Institute_of_Science_and_Technology (UNIST). Original
written by JooHyeon Heo. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Seyong Kwon, Jieung Oh, Min Seok Lee, Eujin Um, Joonwoo Jeong,
Joo H.

Kang. Enhanced Diamagnetic Repulsion of Blood Cells Enables
Versatile Plasma Separation for Biomarker Analysis in Blood. Small,
2021; 17 (23): 2100797 DOI: 10.1002/smll.202100797 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210811131530.htm

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