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This original transmigration method was presented by Stephen Boyden in 1962 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine1. Much of what we know about chemotaxis and chemokinetics would not be possible without the development of the Boyden chamber. Prior to the discovery of the first chemokine in 1977, ex vivo transmigration systems were used to learn about serum-factors that could arrest cellular movement in macrophages while amplifying cellular motility in neutrophils1,2. A massive wealth of knowledge has been developed regarding immune cell migration, and to date, 47 chemokines have now been discovered with 19 corresponding receptors3,4. In addition, multitudes of inhibitors/enhancers of these chemokine pathways have undergone development for therapeutic purposes5,6,7,8. Many of those compounds have been tested in similar transmigration chambers to understand direct interactions between the compounds and immune cell responsiveness to a given chemokine9.
Transmigration, or diapedesis, into inflamed tissue is an essential process to a healthy inflammatory response to clear infection10,11. A Boyden chamber, transmigration system, or transwell apparatus are generally composed of two chambers separated by a porous membrane1,12. The bottom chamber most often holds media containing the chemokine of interest, while leukocytes are placed in the top chamber. The size of the pore in the membrane can be selected based on the size of the cell of interest. For this project, we selected a 3 µm porous membrane, as lymphoid cells are 7-20 µm in size, depending on the stage of cellular development. This pore size ensures that these cells are not passively falling through the pores, but that they are actively migrating in response to the chemokine gradient.
The major advantage of this protocol is its cost effectiveness. In vivo transmigration is difficult because it requires extensive training in animal handling and surgery, and often involves high-powered microscopy that is not always available to a researcher. Cost effective screening of compounds thought to enhance or inhibit transmigration can be accomplished in advance of in vivo imaging. Because the transmigration system is tightly controlled, cells may be treated initially then added to the transwell apparatus, or, vice versa, the chemokine may be treated first with a chemokine inhibitor then cells added to the transwell apparatus. Lastly, endothelial cells and/or basement membrane proteins can be added to the bottom of the transwell insert 1-2 days prior to the transmigration experiment to understand the involvement of these barrier cells in chemokinetics. Again, these manipulations of the system provide a powerful means of determining important information about the effectiveness of a given compound in advance of more complicated in vivo studies.
Utilizing a transmigration chamber system is an effective way to assess lymphocyte mobility under various in vivo and in vitro conditions12,13,14. Herein, we describe an optimized method for assessing ex vivo lymphocyte responsiveness to chemokines in a transmigration chamber. In this example experiment, CD4+ T cells and group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) were isolated from male and female, BALB/c mice following OVA-allergen exposure. A hypothesis was generated that CCR4+ CD45+ Lineage- (LIN-) ILC2 from allergen-challenged mice would migrate more efficiently towards CCL17 and CCL22 than CCR4+ CD4+ T helper cells. CCL17 and CCL22 are chemokines commonly produced by dendritic cells and macrophages of the M2 (allergic) phenotype, among other cells, in allergy15,16. CCL17 and CCL22 can be thought of as biomarkers of allergic inflammation as they are readily detected in the lungs during airway exacerbations16,17,18. Importantly, CCR4 expression is elevated in comparison to untreated controls, as revealed in bioinformatic data generated from ILC2 isolated from house dust mite treated animals, and similarly ILC2 from naïve animals treated ex vivo with IL-33 (allergen-promoting innate cytokine) upregulates CCR419,20. Furthermore, according to data for ILC2 in the Immunological Genome Project database (www.immgen.org), CCR4 mRNA is highly expressed in these innate immune cells. To date, little is known regarding trafficking of ILC2 into tissues, but it is likely that the ILC2 and CD4+ T cells use similar chemokines and receptors for chemotaxis and chemokinetics as they express similar transcription factors and receptors. Thus, we compared CCL17 versus CCL22 responsiveness, of ILC2 and CD4+ T lymphocytes, from both male and female, OVA-challenged animals.