Experimental study of flow physics of platelets and its application on microfluidics platform

Platelets are the key element in the formation of blood clots to stop bleeding at the site of cut or injury. They are non-deformable, discoid shape cell fragments of 1 µm thickness and 2-4 µm in diameter. The morphological properties and flow physics of platelets in the presence of other blood cells play a crucial role for their quick response in the micro vessels. Here, we propose development of microfluidics platform for the experimental study of flow physics of platelets and investigation of effect of various parameters such as concentration of other blood cells and flow rates on it. Later, we utilized our experimental observations for the isolation of platelet derived products e.g., platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and platelet-poor plasma (PPP) from blood samples. These platelets derived products have great clinical relevance and are widely used in disease diagnostics, dermatology, and transfusion purposes. Therefore, isolation of platelet derived products has great value in medical settings. The proposed microfluidics platform separated PRP with ~15-fold enrichment of platelets above normal physiological level and PPP with <1000 platelets/µl and ~95% purity by altering the flow physics of platelets in the microchannel. Afterwards, an extensive biological evaluation of the platelet derived products shows no adverse effect on the quality post isolation from microfluidics platform.