Orange County Register

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UC Irvine says it has developed a faster, cheaper and easier way to identify and sort a type of stem cell that might someday be used to widely treat injuries and disease of the central nervous system.

Irvine scientists and engineers built a tiny, simple device that uses different electrical currents to identify neural stem cells in a process called dielectrophoresis. The core of the device is roughly the width of two dimes, making it a fraction of the size of the $500,000 laser-based stem cell sorters now in use.

Researchers are especially interested in capturing high-quality stem cells that will turn into neurons, which process and transmit information in the brain and spinal cord. It may be possible to use these neural stem cells to treat everything from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease to spinal cord injuries.

The device developed by UCI features a simple glass slide that holds stem cells. “The cells float in sugar water through a tiny channel past electrodes set to a particular frequency,” the university says in a news release. “At a certain frequency, stem cells destined to become neurons will stick to the electrodes while other cells pass by. The cells that stick then can be removed and grouped together, potentially for use in a therapy.”

UCI researchers Lisa Flanagan, Ed Monuki and Abraham Lee led the study that produced the device.

Philip Schwartz, a neural stem cell researcher at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, says, “This is a very interesting study by several of my colleagues at UCI. In essence, they accomplished two major objectives: bringing the cost of cell sorting down and sorting cells based on their inherent properties. The latter is the most important because exposure of the cells to chemicals or animal-derived proteins is not necessary with this new technique. This greatly reduces the chances that the cells will be altered during the sort process, something that cannot be assure with current techniques.

“It remains to be seen, however, whether this new technique can be used successfully with human cells; this study used only mouse cells.”

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