Generalized Plasma Skimming Model for Cells and Drug Carriers in the Microvasculature

TL;DR

This paper introduces a generalized plasma skimming model that predicts the redistribution of blood cells and drug carriers at microvascular bifurcations, enhancing understanding of microvascular transport dynamics.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel model that accounts for interactions between blood cells and drug carriers during plasma skimming in microvasculature.

Findings

Model accurately predicts cell and drug carrier redistribution at bifurcations.

Effective at microvascular network level under various conditions.

Provides insights into drug delivery mechanisms in microcirculation.

Abstract

In microvascular transport, where both blood and drug carriers are involved, plasma skimming has a key role on changing hematocrit level and drug carrier concentration in capillary beds after continuous vessel bifurcation in the microvasculature. While there have been numerous studies on modeling the plasma skimming of blood, previous works lacked in consideration of its interaction with drug carriers. In this paper, a generalized plasma skimming model is suggested to predict the redistributions of both the cells and drug carriers at each bifurcation. In order to examine its applicability, this new model was applied on a single bifurcation system to predict the redistribution of red blood cells and drug carriers. Furthermore, this model was tested at microvascular network level under different plasma skimming conditions for predicting the concentration of drug carriers. Based on these results, the applicability of this generalized plasma skimming model is fully discussed and future works along with the model's limitations are summarized.