VANAPALLI
LABORATORY
Tissue cells are soft materials that can feel and respond to mechanical forces. This aspect is particularly evident in the case of cancer metastasis where tumor cells squeeze through narrow blood capillaries and reach distant organs to create new tumors. Our group aims to understand how the rheology and frictional properties of cancer cells influence their ability to transport in vasculature. A related theme is to characterize the transport and breakup behavior of clusters of tumor cells which have been shown to have higher metastatic potential than individual cells. Fundamental understanding of the rheology and transport properties of cancer cells is expected to lead to functional tools for screening drugs and biophysical characterization of patient samples. Research projects and our publications in this area are:
Rheology and friction of cells
Flow-induced fragmentation of tumor cells & their clusters
Biophysical properties of circulating tumor cells
Microfluidic devices for cancer drug screening
Relevant publications
Ahmmed, S. M., Bithi, S. S., Pore, A., Mubtasim, N., Schuster, C., Gollahon, L. and Vanapalli, S. A. Multi-sample deformability cytometry of cancer cells. APL Bioengineering, 2, 032002, 2018.
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Kamyabi, N., Khan, Z. S. and Vanapalli, S. A. Flow-induced transport of tumor cells in a microfluidic capillary network - Role of friction and repeated deformation. Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, 10, 563, 2017.
Singh, D. K.*, Ahrens C. C.*, Li, W. and Vanapalli, S. A. Label-free high throughput holographic screening and enumeration of tumor cells in blood. Lab on a Chip, 17, 2920, 2017.
Khan, Z. S., Kamyabi, N., Hussain, F., and Vanapalli, S. A. Passage times and friction due to flow of confined cancer cells and deformable particles through a microfluidic channel. Submitted, 2016.
Kamyabi, N. and Vanapalli, S. A. Microfluidic cell fragmentation for mechanical phenotyping of cancer cells. Biomicrofluidics,10, 021102, 2016. (Editor's Picks)
Khan, Z. S. and Vanapalli, S. A. Probing the mechanical properties of brain cancer cells using a microfluidic cell squeezer device. Biomicrofluidics, 7, 011806, 2013. (Special Topic: Microfluidics in Cancer Research).
Sun, M., Khan, Z. S. and Vanapalli, S. A. Blood plasma separation in a long two-phase plug flowing through disposable tubing. Lab on Chip, 12, 5225-5230, 2012.
Sun, M., Bithi, S. S. and Vanapalli, S. A. Microfluidic static droplet arrays with tuneable gradients in material composition. Lab on a Chip, 11, 3949-3952, 2011. (Cover Article)
Vanapalli, S. A., Duits, M. H. G. and Mugele, F. Microfluidics as a functional tool for cell mechanics. Biomicrofluidics, 3, 012006, 2009.
Li, Y., Vanapalli, S. A., Duits, M. H. G. Dynamics of ballistically injected latex particles in living human endothelial cells. Biorheology, 46, 309-321, 2009.
Vanapalli, S. A., Li, Y., Mugele, F. and Duits, M. H. G. On the origins of the universal diffusive dynamics of endogenous granules in mammalian cells. Molecular and Cellular Biomechanics, 150, 1-16, 2009.
Duits, M. H. G., Li, Y. Vanapalli, S. A., Mugele, F. Mapping of spatiotemporal heterogeneous particle dynamics in living cells. Physical Review E , 79, 051910, 2009.