Red Blood Cell confinement

Pack

All-in-one system for an accurate blood cell flow simulation

Controlled mechanical stimulus

Trigger mechanical stimulus by adjusting confinement in real time

Mechanobiological cell response

Allows advanced molecular and morphological analysis of confined cells

High test reproducibility

Enable the downstream analysis of cells

Such as the Red Blood Cell Confinement Pack, are an assembly of instruments that include Elveflow’s catalog products and, at least, one potential setup. The setup has recently been developed by our team, and it is in testing phase. If you are interested in this setup, its applications, or possible variations to better fit your needs, contact our experts!

Credit: SEM of red blood corpuscles. David Gregory & Debbie Marshall.
License: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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Red Blood Cell (RBC) confinement pack

The Red Blood Cell confinement pack will allow you to manipulate and control the flow of fluids to create controlled environments where red blood cells can be confined and studied. RBC confinement refers to the physical restriction or trapping of red blood cells within a specific region. It is also a naturally occurring phenomenon in certain physiological processes and can be artificially induced for research purposes.

Some of the situations in which RBC confinement occurs are in areas of the spleen and bone marrow. For example, in the spleen it acts as a blood filtration system as red blood cells can be temporarily confined in its narrow capillaries.

all-in-one system to simulate physiological functions of RBCs during circulation

In that sense, a simulation model can be used to investigate hematological diseases. This is of great help as it will help with the development of treatments, medical devices and prevention of blood-related diseases.

wHY USE MICROFLUIDICS FOR Red Blood Cell confinement?

Microfluidics will allow manipulation and control of well-defined and reproducible environments to confine red blood cells without causing excessive cell damage or deformation. Thus, microfluidics allows obtaining red blood cell behavior and interactions under conditions very similar to those in vivo.

Likewise, it favors real-time visualization and analysis to directly observe cell dynamics, deformability and responses to different flow conditions or stimuli. This allows the study of parameters such as cell velocity, adhesion, aggregation and mechanical properties. Also, microfluidic systems can be automated.

Thus, in red blood cell confinement, microfluidics can generate precise control of physiological conditions to study the confinement of red blood cells and explore their behavior, interactions and responses in a controlled and physiologically relevant environment.

KEY ADVANTAGES:

- Microfluidics allows fluids to be precisely controlled and manipulated to create a controlled microenvironment.
- Microfluidics enables the integration of multiple functional components into a single device, facilitating high throughput parallel assays.
- Microfluidic systems provide continuous perfusion of nutrients, oxygen and other factors necessary for Red Blood Cell Confinement.
- Microfluidic devices can be seamlessly integrated with a variety of detection and analysis tools for real-time measurements.

Red Blood Cell confinement setup

We provide all the instruments to automate your fluidic setup. One of the possible configurations is shown in the following setup:

Red Blood Cell confinement pack includes:

OB1 Flow Controller
Flow Sensors (Optional)
Several Falcon reservoirs
Kit starter pack Luer Lock with fittings and tubing
Microfluidic chip of your choice
ESI Software
User guide

Our beta pack for a Red Blood Cells confinement model includes all the components needed to set up a controlled model, including pumps, controllers, and software. We can advise you on the best chip as well, in case you don’t have a defined one yet. We also offer technical support and training to help researchers get started with their experiments.

Contact our experts to answer any questions about this pack and how it can match your specifications!

Red Blood Cell (RBC) confinement aplications

Some of the most common applications for investigations on the behavior of red blood cells under fluidics are varying red blood cell concentration, velocity and some channel parameters. For example, it is possible to change the length or width of these channels to observe how the behavior of blood flow in a channel would vary under different conditions.

It is possible to analyze the change of the shape of red blood cells with respect to their vertical position under varying velocities. In that sense, experiments can be developed that allow you to evaluate how healthy red blood cells deform under the effect of friction imposed by the upper and lower walls. Some of the studies may help to understand what causes red blood cells to move away from the upper and lower walls toward regions.

Therefore, our system will help you to carry out your research by varying different parameters and adjusting it to your needs.

Contact our experts to answer any questions about this pack and how it can match your specifications!