Cell Separations and Sorting

The development of new methods and technologies for cell separation, sorting, selection, isolation, or enrichment (many times the aforementioned terms are used interchangeably) are becoming more imperative due in part to the wealth of research aimed at addressing issues for the analysis of liquid biopsy targets, such as rare cells, to realize the concept of "precision medicine". Precision medicine is defined as "treatments targeted to the needs of individual patients on the basis of genetic, biomarker, phenotypic, or psychosocial characteristics that distinguish a patient from others with similar clinical presentations." Before full implementation of precision medicine in a hospital or clinical setting, technological discoveries must be realized to assist in the analysis of disease-associated cells enriched from complex samples.