Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2018 May 15;8:7581. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-25870-2

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Biological significance of cell surface engineering directed to the outermost surface of the glycocalyx. The impact of the redistribution was demonstrated by measuring the extent of immunocamouflage of cell surface antigens on HPG grafted red blood cells in crowded and non-crowded conditions. The number of grafted HPG molecules on the RBCs are 9.5 × 10⁵ and 9.7 × 10⁵ per cell for 20 kDa and 60 kDa HPG-SS respectively under both crowded and non-crowded conditions. (a) Rhesus D (R_hD) and (b) CD47 antigens on the surface of RBCs modified with sterically shielding HPGs. Relative protection compared to unmodified RBC’s was evaluated using flow cytometry analysis and FITC labeled antibodies to R_hD and CD47. The grafting of polymer molecules preferentially on the outer surface of the glycocalyx aided by the crowded conditions generated a significant increase in the shielding effect of grafted polymer molecules. Unpaired comparisons using a non-parametric t-test are significant, p < 0.01 (**) and p < 0.001 (***). (c) Polymer grafting under crowded conditions forms a polymer shield on the cell surface that is better at camouflaging underlying RBC membrane receptors R_hD (a) and CD47 (b). It is proposed that this enhanced effect is on account of polymer grafting concentrated to the apical region of the RBC glycocalyx where grafted polymers are more adept at preventing the access of Ab in solution to the membrane bound receptors. Dashed lines in figure separate the upper and lower regions of the glycocalyx.