LBM simulations on the influence of endothelial SGL structure on cell adhesion in the micro-vessels

The endothelial surface glycocalyx layer (SGL) plays a crucial role in modulating vascular permeability, sensing hydrodynamic changes and attenuating cell adhesion in microcirculation. In this work, the effect of endothelial SGL structure on cell adhesion was numerically studied in the uneven micro-vessel caused by the shedding of SGL. The blood dynamics was conducted by the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), the adhesive dynamics was performed by the stochastic Monte Carlo method, and the cell dynamics was implemented by the Newton^′s law with translation and rotation. To validate the numerical schemes, the cell suspension flow in the symmetric stenotic vessel and the leukocyte adhesion in the straight micro-vessel were executed firstly. The simulation results show that the present numerical schemes are capable of studying cell suspension behavior and leukocyte adhesive phenomenon in the 2-D blood vessels. By investigating the effect of SGL structure on cell adhesion, it is found that the endothelial SGL structure significantly influences cell adhesion function, by changing the geometry of the vessel, providing more ligands to form receptor–ligand bonds, and enhancing the forward reaction rate for forming new bonds. The present results may be helpful in understanding the mechanical mechanism of cell adhesion function with the shedding of endothelial SGL in microcirculation.