Optical and hydrodynamic stretching of single cells from blood

Mechanical properties, like deformability or elasticity, of cells can in some cases be indicative of the health of the organism they originate from. In this work, we explore the potential of deformability and other mechanical parameters of individual red blood cells (RBCs) from humans as a marker for the state of health of the human source, patient or donor.

In particular, we have investigated the use of different experimental strategies implemented in injection molded plastic microfluidic devices. One strategy is to optically stretch the red blood cells in an optical two-beam trap, also known as an optical stretcher, in a microfluidic chip in which optical fibers have been placed during a post-processing step.

Another strategy is to exert hydrodynamic shear forces on the cells by forcing the cells through a narrow constriction. The latter method has the advantage of a considerably higher throughput but does so far not allow for subsequent investigations of single "interesting" cells. The paper is a progress report with preliminary results based on the different strategies, we have pursued.