by Professor Thomas Laurell
Department of Biomedical Engineering,
Lund University, Sweden

Acoustic forces, in combination with microfluidics, has over the past years developed into a new research field – Acoustofluidics – that opens novel routes to gentle and yet high performing manipulation of biological matter. Benefitting from the deterministic behaviour of laminar flow in microscale and the possibility to design acoustic resonators in microchannels, we can utilise well-defined and localised acoustic forces to precisely move cells, acoustophoresis, to perform laboratory unit operations such as depletion/concentration/enrichment, buffer exchange, and separation. Capitalising on this, we have developed platforms for rare cell (CTC) isolation and separation of leukocyte subpopulations and on-line cell washing. Traditional acoustophoresis cell handling typically displays a lower size limit of about 2 micrometres. However, more recent developments have advanced acoustofluidics to enable access also to bacteria and submicron vesicles, where the rising interest in extracellular vesicles and the link to disease biomarkers now is a major focus area. Basic developments and design of acoustofluidic systems will be described, and recent progress in acoustophoretic cell separation and isolation of extracellular vesicles will be overviewed.

Thomas Laurell is a Professor in Medical and Chemical Microsensors at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lund University. He has 20 years experience in the development of lab-on-a-chip based bioanalytical and medical diagnostic technology.

From 2009 to 2014, he served as the director of a clinically oriented research environment, CellCARE at Lund University, with a focus on chip-integrated cell separation and manipulation in clinical applications, using ultrasonic standing wave technology. In 2014, he received a grant from Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), where he worked on acoustofluidic purification of exosomes, microvesicles and bacteria in clinical diagnostic applications. Currently, he is working on acoustofluidics in medical applications, a project funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.