University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 The Biochemical and Biophysical Mechanisms of Macrophage Migration Laurel Erin Hind University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Allergy and Immunology Commons, Biomedical Commons, Immunology and Infectious Disease Commons, and the Medical Immunology Commons Recommended Citation Hind, Laurel Erin, "The Biochemical and Biophysical Mechanisms of Macrophage Migration" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1062. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1062 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1062 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Biochemical and Biophysical Mechanisms of Macrophage Migration Abstract The ability of macrophages to migrate is critical for a proper immune response. During an innate immune response, macrophages migrate to sites of infection or inflammation where they clear pathogens through phagocytosis and activate an adaptive immune response by releasing cytokines and acting as antigen- presenting cells. Unfortunately, improper regulation of macrophage migration is associated with a variety of dieases including cancer, atherosclerosis, wound-healing, and rheumatoid arthritis. In this thesis, engineered substrates were used to study the chemical and physical mechanisms of macrophage migration. We first used microcontact printing to generate surfaces