Techniques for the Control of Immune Cell Function Using Physical Forces

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Michael R. King

Rice University

Michael R. King is the E.D. Butcher Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University, Associate Vice President for Research, and Special Advisor to the Provost on Life Science Collaborations with the Texas Medical Center. He is also a Scholar of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Previously, King was the J. Lawrence Wilson Professor and Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, and before that was the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor at Cornell University. King is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Inventors, and served as founding vice president of the International Society of Bionic Engineering. He served as editor-in-chief of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, an official journal of the BMES. He is currently the President-Elect of AIMBE.

Collection Overview

There is growing interest in understanding how immune cell function can be controlled with physical forces such as fluid shear stress, microneedles, and other microdevices, or with focused ultrasound. The applications range from basic science investigations to clinical translation, in settings as diverse as cancer immunotherapy, infectious disease, and autoimmunity. However, this emerging field is inherently multidisciplinary, and researchers from engineering, immunology, biophysics, and medicine may be unfamiliar with concepts and approaches from outside their own disciplines. The purpose of this Topical Collection is to share best practices in immune cell mechanotransduction, to accelerate adoption and innovation, with the ultimate goal of enabling new research in this area and the improvement of health outcomes.

Abstracts

Let the Force(s) Guide You - studying the mechanobiological forces which alter neutrophil upstream migration

Subham Guin¹,

Aman Mittal¹,

Alexander Buffone^*1

¹BME department, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Focused Ultrasound-Mediated Hyperthermia for the Spatiotemporally Precise Activation of Engineered CAR T-Cells In Vivo

Fan Wei¹,

Peixiang He¹,

Chi Woo Yoon^*2,

Yingxiao Wang^*2

¹University of Southern California ,

²University of Southern California

In vitro methods to model physiological fluid shear stress during metastasis

Melissa Cantu¹,

Abigail Fabiano¹,

Natalie Curry¹,

Nicole Sarna¹,

Michael King^*1

¹Rice University

Micropipette Cell Adhesion Assay: a flow chamber for simulating the capillary microcirculation

David F J Tees^*1,

Prithu Sundd²,

Young Eun Choi³,

Douglas J Goetz⁴

¹Department of Physics & Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 45701,

²Thrombosis & Hemostasis Program, Versiti Blood Research Institute, Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin, MIlwaukee, WI,

³Gachon University Gil Medical Center: Incheon, Incheon, South Korea,

⁴Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Ohio University, Athens, OH

Micro-molding collagen microtracks to study immune cell migration in confining and non-confining collagen channels

Emily Fabiano¹,

Katherine Young²,

Cynthia Reinhart-King^*3

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, and Department of Bioengineering, Rice University ,

²Department of Bioengineering, Rice University ,

³Department of Bioengineering, Rice University

Guest Editor

Collection Overview

Articles

Peristalsis-Induced Mechanical Activation of Macrophages

A Microfluidic Platform for Studying Roles of Mechanical Compression in Tumor-Immune Cell Interactions in a 3D Extracellular Matrix

Abstracts