![]() ![]() For example, at the end of 1941, the United States did not have enough penicillin to treat a single patient by the end of 1943, it was producing enough penicillin to treat the entire Allied Armed Forces 3. Over the next 15 years, improvements in the ability to isolate highly pure penicillin from culture media contributed to the rapid growth in the manufacturability of penicillin in the United States. There was no efficient way to isolate or characterize the unstable compound, and as a result, research on penicillin was largely halted. However, after Fleming’s discovery, very few people, including Fleming himself, envisioned practical therapeutic applications of penicillin 2. Alexander Fleming, who serendipitously discovered the bacteria that produces penicillin in 1928, is considered by many to be the father of antibiotics. For example, the development of penicillin, which has saved tens of millions of lives since its debut in World War II, would not have been possible without the efforts of scientists who discovered methods to isolate the drug from culture media 1. Many advances in medicine over the past century can be attributed to the development of innovative techniques for separating particles and cells of interest from complex mixtures. In this review article, we discuss working principles of acoustofluidic separation, compare different approaches of acoustofluidic separation, and provide a synopsis of how it is being applied in both traditional applications, such as blood component separation, cell washing, and fluorescence activated cell sorting, as well as emerging applications, including circulating tumor cell and exosome isolation. ![]() More importantly, advances in the research lab are quickly being adopted to solve clinical problems. Recent advances in acoustofluidics, such as the development of automated, point-of-care devices for isolating sub-micron bioparticles, address many of the limitations of conventional separation tools. By carefully designing and tuning the applied acoustic field, cells and other bioparticles can be isolated with high yield, purity, and biocompatibility. ![]() ![]() In particular, acoustofluidic separation of biological targets from complex fluids has proven to be a powerful tool due to the label-free, biocompatible, and contact-free nature of the technology. Acoustofluidics, the integration of acoustics and microfluidics, is a rapidly growing research field that is addressing challenges in biology, medicine, chemistry, engineering, and physics. ![]()
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