When the immune system detects a foreign pathogen, a cascade of chemical signals call white blood cells to the scene. Neutrophils are the most common and abundant type of these cells and while they start accumulating at the site of an infection within minutes, they are essentially at the mercy of the circulatory system’s one-way flow of traffic to get them where they need to go.
Now, research from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science shows how these cells can be coaxed to fight the direction of blood flow, crawling upstream along the walls of veins and arteries.
The in vitro study suggested that this technique could get neutrophils to the sites of infections faster when they are restricted to the direction of blood flow.
Daniel A. Hammer, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and Alexander Buffone, Jr., a research associate in his lab, led the research. Nicholas R. Anderson, a graduate student in the Hammer lab, also contributed to the study.
They published their findings in Biophysical Journal.