Magnetics Business & Technology - May/June 2022 - 4

EDITOR'S CHOICE
Ferrologix Breaking New Ground in Micromagnetic Sorting for
Biotech
Ferrologix, a biotech startup that is developing micromagnetic
tools to address a variety of cell and tissue
processing applications, is breaking new ground with
its work on isolating rare cells from blood samples.
Recently the company has installed several of its cell
separation systems at medical research institutes
in the Boston area focusing on developing precision
medicine diagnostics and therapeutics, according to
Coleman Murray, chief operating officer.
Located in Carlsbad, California, the company was
founded in 2015 based on a core technology that
Murray invented called digital magnetic sorting or ratcheting cytometry. The technology
uses chips composed of ferromagnetic microstructure arrays which can be used to concentrate
and manipulate magnetic fields at microscopic scales. By subjecting the chips to
a rotating or ratcheting, magnetic field, cells which have been magnetically tagged can be
precisely transported as they jump from element to element. The manipulation process can
be used to precisely transport and filter millions of cells simultaneously.
" While magnetic cell sorting is the gold standard for target cell enrichment, traditional magnetic
sorting methods struggle to deliver sufficient purities and yields when targeting rare
cell populations, " the company explained in a poster paper at this year's conference of the
Society for Laboratory Automation & Screening, held February in Boston.
Shown above is its benchtop cell separator. It achieves superior rare cell isolation compared
to existing magnetic separators as well as parallelized sorting of two surface targets
simultaneously, says Ferrologix. Micromagnetic substrates pixelate static and dynamic
magnetic fields to the microscale utilizing arrays of ferromagnetic microstructures. Using
standard magnetic bead reagents, cells or other biological elements can be trapped and
piloted on these arrays by cycling the magnetic field at defined frequencies. The digital
magnetic sorting takes a normally binary process and augments it with flow cytometry like
capabilities.
Using chips with gradient pitch micromagnetic
arrays, magnetically tagged cells can be sorted
based on the quantity of cell bound magnetic
content. On a Ferrologix chip, cells can be sorted
into magnetic distributions based on magnetic intensity,
similar to how fluorescence-activated cell
sorting uses light intensity. The technique can
achieve high purity enrichment of rare cell types
by " gating " out weakly magnetic non-target cells.
Weakly magnetic non-target cells will remain
trapped at lower microelement pitches compared
to highly magnetic target cells.
Ferrologix is scaling its platform to achieve high throughput target
cell purification for cell therapy manufacturing applications.
Just like the benchtop system, the production scale cell sorter
can achieve high purity enrichment of rare cell types on a single
target or parallel isolation of two targets.
Utilizing ordered magnetic microstructures,
it is also developing a suite of tools
for single cell analysis and gene modification.
Magnetized cells self-assemble
into single cell arrays which can then be
assayed or modified using specially developed
magnetic reagents.
Single cell system
For more info, see www.ferrologix.com.
4 Magnetics Business & Technology * May/June 2022
www.MagneticsMag.com
Scaled system for high
throughput
Volume 21, Issue 3
Editor & Publisher
David Webster
Contributing Editor
Dr. Stan Trout
Director of Operations and
Support Services
Ross Webster
Director of Sales and Content
Scott Webster
Design & Layout
Scott Webster
Administration
Marsha Grillo
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