Affinity adsorption of cells to surfaces and strategies for cell detachment

A review. The use of bio-specific interactions for the sepn. and recovery of biomols. is now widely established and in many cases the technique has successfully crossed the divide between bench and process scale operation. Although the major specificity advantage of affinity-based sepns. also applies to systems intended for cell fractionation, developments in this area have been slower. Many of the problems encountered result from attempts to take techniques developed for mol. systems and, with only minor modification to the conditions used, apply them for the sepn. of cells. This approach tends to ignore or at least trivialise the problems, which arise from the heterogeneous nature of a cell suspension and the multivalent nature of the cell/surface interaction. To develop viable sepn. processes on a larger scale, effective contacting strategies are required in separators that also allow detachment or recovery protocols that overcome the enhanced binding strength generated by multivalent interactions. The effects of interaction valency on interaction strength needs to be assessed and approaches developed to allow effective detachment and recovery of adsorbed cells without compromising cell viability. This article considers the influence of operating conditions on cell attachment and the extent to which multivalent interactions det. the strength of cell binding and subsequent detachment. [on SciFinder (R)]