Magnetic Levitation in Medicine and Bioengineering

As one of the inherent characteristics of cell, density is a significant biomarker for the analysis and investigation of multiple cellular events. Density profiles of cell populations are informative data concerning physiological research such as differentiation, live-death assay, aging, immune response, or drug resistance (Durmus et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 112:3661–3668, 2015). The fast-speed, low-cost, and high-resolution measurement of single-cell level density plays a vital role in cell type recognition and detection of minute changes in cell properties, which indicates the cells’ responses to the physical surroundings. Based on the density profiles of cell populations, further avalanche applications spanning over separation and sorting, manipulations, 3D cell culture, and point-of-care diagnosis are possible.