Dipartimento di Ingegneria chimica, Università di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy.
Lab Chip. 2011 Feb 7;11(3):449-54. doi: 10.1039/c0lc00348d. Epub 2010 Nov 15.
In this work, a microfluidic system to investigate the flow behavior of red blood cells in a microcirculation-mimicking network of PDMS microchannels with thickness comparable to cell size is presented. We provide the first quantitative description of cell velocity and shape as a function of the applied pressure drop in such devices. Based on these results, a novel methodology to measure cell membrane viscoelastic properties in converging/diverging flow is developed, and the results are in good agreement with data from the literature. In particular, in the diverging channel the effect of RBC surface viscosity is dominant with respect to shear elasticity. Possible applications include measurements of cell deformability in pathological samples, where reliable methods are still lacking.
在这项工作中，我们提出了一种微流控系统，用于研究在厚度与细胞尺寸相当的 PDMS 微通道微循环模拟网络中红细胞的流动行为。我们提供了第一个定量描述细胞速度和形状的函数，作为在这些设备中应用压降的函数。基于这些结果，开发了一种在会聚/发散流中测量细胞膜粘弹性特性的新方法，并且结果与文献中的数据吻合良好。特别是，在发散通道中，RBC 表面粘度的影响相对于剪切弹性是主要的。可能的应用包括在病理样本中测量细胞变形性，而目前仍缺乏可靠的方法。
