Deformability based cell margination for malarial infected red blood cell enrichment

Abstract

In this work, the physiological phenomenon of leukocyte margination is mimicked in microfluidic systems for biological separation of malarial infected RBCs (iRBCs) from blood. Change in cell stiffness is a characteristic of iRBCs which can act as an intrinsic biomarker for separation. Tests were conducted using early ring stage and late trophozoite/schizont stage iRBCs which vary significantly in their deformability. Filtration efficiency was quantified by analyzing the dispersion of iRBCs across the microchannel width at the outlet. Flow cytometry analysis was conducted on the outlet samples indicating filtration efficiency of ∼80% for early stage iRBCs and >90% for late stage iRBCs. This is the first demonstration applying this unique biomimetic separation technique to iRBCs filtration for disease diagnostic application.