Intrinsically magnetic susceptibility in human blood and its impact on
cell separation: Non-classical and intermediate monocytes have the
strongest magnetic behavior in fresh human blood
Abstract
The presence of iron in circulating monocytes is well known as they play
an essential role in iron recycling. It has been demonstrated that the
iron content of blood cells can be measured through their magnetic
behavior; however, the magnetic properties of different monocyte
subtypes remain unknown. In this study, we report for the first time,
the magnetic behavior of classical, intermediate and non-classical
monocytes, which is related to their iron storage capacity. The magnetic
properties of monocytes were compared to other blood cells, such as
lymphocytes and red blood cells in the oxyhemoglobin and methemoglobin
states, and a cancer cell type. For this analysis, we used an instrument
referred to as Cell Tracking Velocimetry (CTV), which quantitatively
characterizes the magnetic behavior of biological entities. Our results
demonstrate that significant fractions of the intermediate and
non-classical monocytes have high magnetophoretic mobilities, equivalent
to methemoglobin red blood cells and higher than the classical subset,
suggesting their higher iron storage capacities. Moreover, our findings
have implications for the immunomagnetic separation industry; we
demonstrate that negative magnetic isolation techniques for recovering
monocytes from blood should be used with caution, as it is possible to
lose magnetic monocytes when using this technique.