Deformability considerations in filtration of biological cells
- Resource Type
- Authors
- David S. W. Lim; Daniel T. Chiu; J. Patrick Shelby; Laiying Ng; Jason S. Kuo; Yongxi Zhao; Perry G. Schiro
- Source
- Lab on a chip. 10(7)
- Subject
- Lysis
Materials science
Microfluidics
Biomedical Engineering
Bioengineering
Nanotechnology
General Chemistry
Biochemistry
law.invention
Highly sensitive
Cell Physiological Phenomena
Membrane
law
Cell Line, Tumor
Local pressure
Animals
Humans
Fluidics
Rheology
Filtration
Microfabrication
- Language
- ISSN
- 1473-0197
Biological cells are highly sensitive to variation in local pressure because cellular membranes are not rigid. Unlike microbeads, cells deform under pressure or even lyse. In isolating or enriching cells by mechanical filtration, pressure-induced lysis is exacerbated when high local fluidic velocity is present or when a filter reaches its intended capacity. Microfabrication offers new possibilities to design fluidic environments to reduce cellular stress during the filtration process. We describe the underlying biophysics of cellular stress and general solutions to scale up filtration processes for biological cells.