Imaging blood and endothelial cells and measuring their interaction forces with laser tweezers

Abstract

The flux of blood in a human body depends on many different factors, among which the microrheologic factors predominate, i.e., red blood cell (RBC) aggregation etc. RBC aggregation significantly alters blood viscosity, and the mechanisms of RBC aggregation as well as endothelial issues are still being studied. Both RBC and endothelium can be studied in vitro on single cell level using laser tweezers. Laser tweezers are a scientific tool using a highly focused laser beam to trap and manipulate dielectric microparticles and living cells. RBC were extensively studied using laser tweezers, however, there is no full understanding of RBC behavior in the laser trap.
The main aims of this work were both to study the behavior of RBC in an optical trap and to study the interaction of RBCs of healthy donors with endothelial cells monolayer and to measure the interaction forces between RBCs and endothelium at single cell level using laser tweezers.
The laser power limitations for the optical trapping as well as the measurement time duration limits were found. Also, it was found that there is saturation of the interaction force in the range of fibrinogen concentration 4-8 mg/ml. These results are important for better understanding of RBC and endothelium interaction at single cell level.
This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Grant No. 22-15-00120) and performed according to the Development program of the Interdisciplinary Scientific and Educational School of Lomonosov Moscow State University «Photonic and Quantum Technologies. Digital medicine».

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P.B. Ermolinskiy
Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow,
Russia

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