BIOLOGICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ASPECTS OF MAGNETIC FLUID TECHNOLOGY

Magnetic fluid technology has undergone study and development in its biological and biomedical aspects, principally in image enhancement and in the use of a variety of Separation techniques in the purification of biological materials or in the identification of very small amounts of organisms, cells, or genomic material. Many of these processes are already applied to small scale laboratory processing or manufacturing. A variety of magnetic materials are used; no standard technique has yet been consolidated but efficiency of separation especially is rapidly increasing. Clinical applications may be related both to diagnosis in areas of low level infection or contamination and also in ex-vivo processing of materials such as human bone marrow or peripheral blood where specific cell populations can be extracted. This may be a valuable tool in human bone marrow processing and in the coming field of gene transfer technology, as well as in the purification of genomic material.