Open AccessFinding intracellular lipid droplets from the single-cell biolens’ signature in a holographic flow-cytometry assay
Author(s) -
Daniele Pirone,
Daniele Sirico,
Martina Mugnano,
Danila del Giudice,
Ivana Kurelac,
Beatrice Cavina,
Pasquale Memmolo,
Lisa Miccio,
Pietro Ferraro
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.460204
Subject(s) - flow cytometry , cytometry , intracellular , microscopy , pathology , medicine , biology , microbiology and biotechnology
In recent years, intracellular LDs have been discovered to play an important role in several pathologies. Therefore, detection of LDs would provide an in-demand diagnostic tool if coupled with flow-cytometry to give significant statistical analysis and especially if the diagnosis is made in full non-invasive mode. Here we combine the experimental results of in-flow tomographic phase microscopy with a suited numerical simulation to demonstrate that intracellular LDs can be easily detected through a label-free approach based on the direct analysis of the 2D quantitative phase maps recorded by a holographic flow cytometer. In fact, we demonstrate that the presence of LDs affects the optical focusing lensing features of the embracing cell, which can be considered a biological lens. The research was conducted on white blood cells (i.e., lymphocytes and monocytes) and ovarian cancer cells. Results show that the biolens properties of cells can be a rapid biomarker that aids in boosting the diagnosis of LDs-related pathologies by means of the holographic flow-cytometry assay for fast, non-destructive, and high-throughput screening of statistically significant number of cells.