On the adhesion of particles to a cell layer under flow

TL;DR

This study investigates how particle size influences their adhesion to cell layers under flow conditions, deriving scaling laws that inform nanoparticle design for biomedical applications.

Contribution

It introduces new scaling adhesion laws based on fixed particle volume experiments, linking particle size to adhesion efficiency.

Findings

Adherent particle number decreases with size as d^(-1.7)

Adherent particle volume increases with size as d^(+1.3)

Provides insights for designing nanoparticles in drug delivery

Abstract

The non-specific adhesion of spherical particles to a cell substrate is analyzed in a parallel plate flow chamber, addressing the effect of the particle size. Differently from other experiments, the total volume of the injected particles has been fixed, rather than the total number of particles, as the diameter d of the particles is changed from 500 nm up to 10 $\mu$m. From the analysis of the experimental data, simple and instructive scaling adhesion laws have been derived showing that (i) the number of particles adherent to the cell layer per unit surface decreases with the size of the particle as d^(-1.7) ; and consequently (ii) the volume of the particles adherent per unit surface increases with the size of the particles as d^(+1.3). These results are of importance in the "rational design" of nanoparticles for drug delivery and biomedical imaging.