Page 461 - AWSAR 2.0

possible to record these electrical changes accurately, rapidly and at a single-cell level! This opens up a plethora of prospects.
Our platform was employed to analyse >9000 individual lymphocytes
from patients with diabetes
and healthy volunteers.
Upon comparison of the two
populations, a longer transit time
was recorded for lymphocytes
in patients with diabetes,
correlating to a decrease in
deformability. Additionally,
larger electrical signal
amplitudes were observed for
lymphocytes in patients with
diabetes compared with their
normal counterparts, indicating
significant changes in electrical
behaviour. The data from
both these parameters were
combined to visually distinguish
the differences between normal and diabetic lymphocytes and develop a simple diagnostic model that could predict whether a random lymphocyte from an individual was healthy or diabetic.
This study is the first demonstration of a microfluidic platform that enables one to perform high-speed, multi-modal measurements on human lymphocytes while being capable of detecting cellular changes in disease conditions. By incorporating novel methods to eliminate various sources of measurement errors, this study also improves the precision of recorded data. Finally, we
Mr. Karthik Mahesh || 437
conclude that a disease condition (diabetes in this case) indeed leads to biophysical and rheological changes in individual cells that are typically unobservable through
basic biochemical tests. Such changes can serve as potential biomarkers in understanding the pathophysiological progression of a disease and its complications in the blood microvasculature. Further studies are in the nascent stage to understand whether similar changes can be observed in other diseases such as cancer. In the near future, this kind of technology may assist in the development of a pre- diagnostic tool that supports health care professionals in assessing whether a patient has the chance of developing
disease even before the onset of disease symptoms, using just a single drop of blood!
This research work was published in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering in August 2019 and authored by Karthik Mahesh, Manoj M. Varma and Prosenjit Sen. The study was conducted at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc, and supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India. The nanofabrication facilities at CeNSE were funded by MHRD, MeitY and DST Nano Mission.
‘What additional information can we get from analysing electrical signals from these cells?’ A cell is essentially a complex union of a cytoskeletal network, lipid membrane, proteins, DNA,
ion channels and many more components that give rise to its fundamental electrical properties.