Application of microfluidic systems for the study of cellular behaviors has been a flourishing area of research in the past decade. In the process of probing cell biomechanics the passage of a cell through a narrow microchannel or a small pore has attracted much attention during the recent years. And the study of cellular deformability and transportability using these systems with enhanced resolution and accuracy has opened a new paradigm for high-throughput characterization of both healthy and diseased cell populations. Here we use the level-set method to explore the relationship between the transit time and mechanical properties of normal white blood cells (WBCs) and breast cancer epithelial cells (MCF7) under different microenvironmental parameters (i.e., pressure difference, cell size, effective cell surface tension, constriction size and taper angle) in a 2-D computational domain by considering the cell as a viscous drop. The novel biomechanical relations are obtained for each cell type by the Response Surface Method (RSM), relating microenvironmental parameters to the dimensionless entry time of the normal and cancer cells. Our results revealed that MCF7 cells show a significantly different behavior (a bifurcating behavior when the pressure difference of inlet/outlet increases) in regards to the dimensionless entry time as a function of microchannel taper angle in comparison with the WBC. These results suggest that the microenvironmental parameters have a significant effect on the transportability of the cells and different cells have different behaviors in response to a specific microenvironmental parameter. Finally, it can be claimed that this method can be also utilized to distinguish between benign and cancerous cells or even to probe tumor heterogeneity toward high throughput cell cytometry.

在过去的十年中，微流体系统在细胞行为研究中的应用一直是一个蓬勃发展的研究领域。在探索细胞生物力学的过程中，近年来，细胞通过狭窄的微通道或小孔的通道已经引起了广泛的关注。使用这些系统以提高的分辨率和精度对细胞变形性和运输性进行的研究，为健康和患病细胞群体的高通量表征开辟了新的范例。在这里，我们使用水平设置方法来探索在不同微环境参数（即压差，细胞大小，有效细胞）下正常白细胞（WBC）和乳腺癌上皮细胞（MCF7）的转运时间与力学性能之间的关系。表面张力，二维计算域中的收缩尺寸和锥角），方法是将单元格视为粘性降。通过响应表面方法（RSM）针对每种细胞类型获得了新颖的生物力学关系，将微环境参数与正常细胞和癌细胞的无量纲进入时间相关联。我们的结果表明，与WBC相比，MCF7细胞在无因次进入时间上是微通道锥角的函数，表现出显着不同的行为（当入口/出口的压力差增加时出现分叉行为）。这些结果表明，微环境参数对细胞的运输性具有显着影响，并且不同细胞对特定的微环境参数具有不同的行为。最后，