Red Blood Cell Sickling During Oxygen Cycles in a Microdroplet Device

Paul Abbyad (1) , Remi Dangla (2) , Pierre-Louis Tharaux (3) , Charles Baroud (2) , Antigoni Alexandrou (1)

1 LOB - Laboratoire d'optique et biosciences
2 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique
3 Paris Cardiovasc Res Ctr, Paris, France

We have developed a novel microfluidic device to study repetitive sickling on individual red blood cells by replicating the physiological oxygen cycling of the vascular circulatory system (Abbyad et al., Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 813). A small number of red blood cells from sickle cell patients are encapsulated in an array of aqueous microdroplets. These microdroplets are anchored and arranged in a 2-dimensional array against the flow of the carrier oil. Precise spatial and temporal changes in oxygen concentration are obtained through gas exchange with the inert oil flowing outside the droplets.

Domains: Fluid mechanics [physics.class-ph]; Fluids mechanics [physics.class-ph]

Paul Abbyad, Remi Dangla, Pierre-Louis Tharaux, Charles Baroud, Antigoni Alexandrou. Red Blood Cell Sickling During Oxygen Cycles in a Microdroplet Device. Biophysical Journal, 2012, 102 (3), pp.29A-29A. ⟨10.1016/j.bpj.2011.11.184⟩. ⟨hal-01025970⟩