title: Quantitative Biomechanics of Healthy and Diseased Human Red Blood Cells using Dielectrophoresis in a Microfluidic System.
abstract: We present an experimental method to quantitatively characterize the mechanical properties of a large number of biological cells by introducing controlled deformation through dielectrophoresis in a microfluidic device. We demonstrate the capability of this technique by determining the force versus deformation characteristics of healthy human red blood cells (RBCs) and RBCs infectedin vitrowithPlasmodium falciparummalaria parasites. These experiments clearly distinguish uninfected and healthy RBCs from infected ones, and the mechanical signatures extracted from these tests are in agreement with data from other independent methods. The method developed here thus provides a potentially helpful tool to characterize quickly and effectively the isolated biomechanical response of cells in a large population, for probing the pathological states of cells, disease diagnostics, and drug efficacy assays.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dao
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
authors.forename: Subra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suresh
keywords: cell deformability; dielectrophoresisforce; malaria