Impact of Radiation on Blood Cell Deformability

Abstract

Abstract : This project had two exploratory goals. The first is the investigation the effect of radiation on the deformability of blood cells, as detected by novel microfluidic chips. The long-term goal would be to have a rapid low-cost method to screen people for exposure to radiation. For this project we have developed chips to measure deformability of both red and white blood cells in human blood, and observed an effect from radiation. We found that at very high doses, there was a clear difference in the behavior of irradiated and non-irradiated cells. The physical reason behind the behavior was more complicated that originally postulated. Further work needs to be done to understand such behavior, and to examine clear trends at lower radiation doses. Second, the project had a goal of using novel microfluidic fractionation technologies to rapidly find lymphoblasts in blood. These are early marker of disease and/or vaccine response. If they can be detected, it would allow the early detection of immune system response and allow fast testing of vaccine efficacy. This would shorten vaccine development cycles in times of emergency and improve mass population vaccinations. Towards this end, we have recently for the first time successfully detected large white blood cells in a regular human blood, and indeed observed the changes using rapid microfluidic techniques in white blood cell size populations due to infection from staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB), a potential bioterror agent.