Margination of discoidal micro-sized particles in blood flow

Micro-sized vascular-targeted drug carriers and imaging agents are promising for therapeutic applications. The hydrodynamics-driven migration of these micro-particles toward the vessel wall is known as margination and is the prerequisite of adhesion to the endothelial layer. Herein, we apply the lattice Boltzmann method coupled with the immersed boundary method to investigate the effect of the particle properties, vessel size, and hematocrit on the margination of discoidal polymeric micro-particles in whole blood. Experiments have shown that Leukocytes account for Young's modulus dependence of the adhesion of micro-sized particles on the vessel wall under different shear rates. On the other hand, micro-sized drug carriers can alter the dynamics of white blood cells in blood flow. We exploit our cellular-sale modeling to examine these complicated dependences. Besides, red blood cells rigidify and undergo morphological changes in diseases. We also look into the effect of red cell deformability on the margination of white blood cells and micro-sized drug carriers.