CAREER: Artificial cell membranes for ultra-pure, high throughput cellular isolation

Overview Cell based therapies, where healthy cells are transplanted to naturally restore biological function, represent an exciting future direction in medicine. Critically, fluorescent sorting (FACS, the leading technique for high-purity cell sorting) is insufficient in sorting speed to satisfy the wide-spread need for purified cells in emerging cellular therapies. Sorting by FACS requires an entire day to isolate a volume of cells which is barely visible to the naked eye (~10^7 cells), while most proposed therapies require at least 100x more cells for a single dose. The PI recently discovered a method of isolating cells which is capable of being performed in a typical lab setting in