A new semi-automatic living-cell isolation system was developed. The new system improves the quality of isolated cells, reduces cell isolation time, and isolates more cells with a higher cell viability compared to conventional manual methods. We successfully applied this system to isolate beating cardiomyocytes and fabricate electrical communicative cardiac tissue. In this study using the isolated cardiac cells we also fabricated a cardiac cell sheet that beat spontaneously and synchronously. (C) 2012, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved.