Deformability based Cell Sorting Enabling Quality Control of Stored Red Blood Cells

红血球在血液中循环大约120天，向体内所有组织输送氧气。红细胞的一个关键特性是它们能够挤进比自己直径小很多倍的毛细血管。捐献的红细胞由加拿大血液服务局收集，用于输血，可以储存长达42天。在此期间，这些细胞的变形能力被降解，损害了它们在毛细血管中循环的能力。因此，在输血接受者中，这些细胞的活力从120天减少到，在某些情况下，几小时或几分钟。目前，没有简单的方法来衡量捐献的血液单位的质量，如定义为多长时间 它们将在接受输血的人中循环。此外，献血者之间似乎有很大的差异，一些献血者提供的血液在受者体内循环的时间比其他献血者长。我们的研究团队最近开发了一种分析红细胞变形性的方法，根据红细胞的变形性对这些细胞进行分类，以确定较易变形的红细胞在受者体内循环的时间是否比较不容易变形的红细胞更长。我们计划使用这种方法来分析捐献的红细胞，以估计捐献的血液单位的预期循环时间。这一能力将使医生能够识别高质量的血液单位，以便在循环时间较长的患者中进行治疗，这将减少这些患者的输血次数，从而增加整体血液供应。此外，估计单个捐献血液单位的循环时间的能力将使加拿大血液服务机构能够改进其生产和储存做法，以提高提供给输血接受者的血液质量。

Red blood cells circulate in the bloodstream for approximately 120 days, delivering oxygen to all tissues in the body. A key property of red blood cells is their ability to squeeze into capillary blood vessels that are many times smaller than their own diameter. Donated red blood cells, collected by the Canadian Blood Service for use in blood transfusions, can be stored for up to 42 days. During this time, the deformability of these cells is degraded, impairing their ability to circulate in capillary blood vessels. As a result, the viability of these cells in transfusion recipients is reduced from 120 days to, in some cases, hours or minutes. Currently, there are no simple methods to measure the quality of donated blood units, as defined by how long they will circulate in transfusion recipients. Additionally, there appears to be significant differences between donors, where some donors could provide blood that circulate longer in recipients than other donors. Our research team recently developed a method to analyze red blood cell deformability by sorting these cells based on their deformability in order to determine if the more deformable red blood cells circulate for longer in recipients than less deformable cells. We plan to use this approach to analyze donated red blood cells in order to estimate the expected circulation time of donated blood units. This capability would enable physicians to identify high-quality blood units in order to treat patients where a longer circulation time is critical, which would reduce the number of blood transfusions for these patients, and thus increase the overall blood supply. Additionally, the ability to estimate circulation time of individual donated blood units would allow Canadian Blood Service to improve their production and storage practices in order to improve the quality of blood provided to transfusion recipients.