Observing Red Blood Cells Transforming into Datura Cells – Empa Researchers’ Findings

2024-02-06 08:13:49

Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute

Dübendorf, St. Gallen and Thun, February 6, 2024 – Empa researchers have observed living red blood cells transforming into “datura cells” when they are treated with high concentrations of the drug ibuprofen. Using holotomographic microscopy, they were able to measure the red blood cells as they transformed in real time and display them in 3D renderings.

Blood is indeed “a very special juice”. Because what the poet and natural scientist Goethe already suspected can now actually be made visible using innovative imaging processes. One of these special features is also the cell that occurs most frequently in the bloodstream: the erythrocyte. Trillions of these red blood cells make their rounds through the human body every minute. The fact that they don’t always have a round shape allows them to squeeze through the narrowest of veins to supply the most remote corners of our body with oxygen.

However, some changes in the shape of the erythrocytes are also typical of specific changes in the environment: so-called datura cells with pointed extensions occur, for example, in the event of a burn, liver damage or contact with certain medications. Empa researchers were now able to observe the transformation of red blood cells into datura cells using digital holotomographic microscopy.

Talia Bergaglio and Peter Nirmalraj from the “Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces” laboratory in Dübendorf provoked the deformation of living red blood cells by adding the drug ibuprofen. Thanks to holotomographic microscopy, they were able to track the transformation of round donuts into datura cells in real time. This innovative technology works similarly to computed tomography (CT), with imaging using laser technology instead of X-rays. Digital holographic microscopy is therefore particularly suitable for biological samples such as blood cells, as it enables high-resolution, non-contact and marker-free images that can then be reconstructed into a three-dimensional representation.

Red blood cells are a perfect model system because, over the course of their existence, they separate themselves from all components that prevent them from carrying out their main task of transporting oxygen; they are ultimately (almost) empty membrane shells. “Our imaging method can therefore be used to examine the interactions of a large number of drug molecules with the cell membrane particularly well in red blood cells,” says Empa researcher Nirmalraj.

Address for inquiries

Dr. Peter Nirmalraj, Empa
Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces
Tel. [phone]
[email protected]

editor

Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute