Applying microfluidic techniques for biomaterial and mechanical regulation of mesenchymal stem cells

Table 1 Microfluidic techniques for sorting and heterogeneity analysis of mesenchymal stem cells

Category	Method	Isolation principle	Discrimination parameters	Throughput	Advantages	Limitations	Ref.
Label-free sorting	Inertial microfluidics	Inertial lift and Dean drag forces	Cell size, shape	High	Label-free	Limited resolution for subtle biophysical differences	[14,16,25,28,29,31]
	Deterministic lateral displacement	Lateral deflection using micropillar arrays	Cell size, shape, deformability	High	Label-free	Limited resolution for subtle biophysical differences	[26,32,33]
	Dielectrophoresis	Non-uniform electric field	Dielectric properties, cell size	Low to medium	Label-free	Limited resolution for subtle biophysical differences	[27,34,36,37]
	Magnetophoresis	Magnetic field gradient	Magnetic susceptibility	Medium	Label-free	Limited resolution for subtle biophysical differences	[38,39]
	Acoustophoresis	Acoustic radiation forces	Cell density, compressibility, size	Medium	Label-free, gentle on cells	Limited resolution for subtle biophysical differences	[38,40,41]
Affinity-based sorting	Fluorescence-activated cell sorting	Fluorescent labeling & optical detection	Surface markers, fluorescence intensity	Relatively low	High specificity, multiparameter	Requires labeling	[44,47-49]
	Magnetic-activated cell sorting	Magnetic bead affinity	Surface marker expression	Medium	High specificity	Requires labeling	[43,50,51]
	Affinity capture	Surface ligand-receptor adhesion	Ligand binding kinetics	Very low	High specificity	Ligand activity loss	[52-54]