Viscoelasticity as a biomarker for high-throughput flow cytometry.

Area of Science:

• Biophysics
• Cellular Mechanics
• Infectious Disease Diagnostics

Background:

• Cell mechanical properties are label-free markers for cell health.
• Low measurement throughput limits their clinical application.
• Rapid cell analysis is hindered by slow cell stress relaxation times.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop high-throughput, label-free methods for assessing cell mechanics.
• To investigate cell viscoelastic properties at high frequencies for phenotype identification.
• To establish dynamic viscoelasticity as a basis for rapid cell classification.

Main Methods:

• Measuring erythrocyte mechanical properties at frequencies exceeding cell relaxation times.
• Analyzing both elastic and inelastic responses of infected and uninfected cells.
• Utilizing dynamic viscoelasticity for high-frequency cell analysis.

Main Results:

• Elastic response alone did not detect malaria (Plasmodium falciparum infection) at high frequencies.
• Inelastic cell responses showed significant changes at rapid assay timescales.
• Dynamic viscoelasticity reliably indicated infection, distinguishing infected from uninfected erythrocytes.

Conclusions:

• High-frequency dynamic viscoelasticity can overcome the speed limitations of traditional mechanical property measurements.
• Inelastic cell responses at rapid timescales serve as a reliable indicator of malaria infection.
• This approach offers a nondestructive, high-throughput method for cell classification, analogous to current sorting techniques.