(316u) Nature of Hemodynamic Forces on Vascular Endothelial Cells, Leukocytes or Cancer Cells Adhering to the Surface of Blood Vessels
AIChE Annual Meeting
2006
2006 Annual Meeting
Engineering Sciences and Fundamentals
Poster Session in Fluid Mechanics
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 6:30pm to 9:00pm
The hemodynamic forces on endothelial cells or leukocytes attached to the inner surface of blood vessels affect the physiological behavior of these systems via mechano-transduction or receptor-ligand binding. The present talk investigates the relative importance and nature of the two components of the hemodynamic force, i.e. the shear and normal force, on a cell and its vicinity. We consider a wide range of blood vessels (from capillaries to large arteries) and cell's spreading angles. Based on computational investigation and analysis, our study demonstrates that the normal force contributes significantly to the total force on the cell; the influence is much more pronounced in small vessels. We also show that the spreading of the cell on the vessel surface should not be discounted especially in small vessels. Our results are also applicable to the fluid forces on other protuberances of biological nature in vascular vessels (e.g. cancer cells) as well as to the fluid forces over protuberances in microfluidics and porous media.