Quantifying the Effects of Transient Cellular Characteristics

Streaming potential captures the cellular electrostatic characteristics in biological systems. Studying electrostatic properties of cells and cellular layers will help in effectively designing drug delivery vehicles for in-vivo vaccination. Tangential flow devices are widely employed to measure the streaming potential of cells. This, however, is ineffective as it does not take into account the areas between the cells, the extracellular matrix synthesized by the cells, and the effect of cellular processes such as microvilli, lamellipodia or filopodia etc. Moreover, tangential flow systems also displace the cells from the membrane on which they are seeded. Our laboratory has developed a novel device that measures the streaming potential of cells using normal flow. Our device not only captures the electrostatic properties of the areas between the cells, but prevents the displacement of cells. Our previous work also developed a mathematical equation using Helmholtz-Smoluchowski and Darcy’s law that extracts the charge contribution of a confluent cellular layer from a cell-membrane configuration. In this study, we will be employing the proposed device and methodology to quantify the effect of cellular features on the overall streaming potential of cells. We will capture the streaming potential and the corresponding pressure and flux across the cell-membrane configuration. To quantify the electrostatic contribution of microvilli growing on epithelial cells and the contribution of extracellular matrix synthesized by endothelial cells, we will use a variant of epithelial colorectal cells and human endothelial cells respectively in 2, 6, and 14-day time intervals.