December 8
@
4:00 PM
–
5:00 PM
Laurel Hind
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
University of Colorado – Boulder
Inflammation-on-a-Chip: Redefining How We Study Immune Responses
110981747789516
The innate immune response must coordinate diverse cell populations to eliminate pathogens, heal wounds, and maintain tissue homeostasis. This coordination depends on dynamic communication between immune cells and their surrounding tissue environment, yet even subtle disruptions in these interactions can drive chronic inflammation and contribute to diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, fibrosis, and autoimmunity. As immunotherapies continue to transform the treatment of disease, a central challenge remains: understanding how innate immune cells integrate complex environmental cues to execute precise, context-dependent functions.
A major obstacle to answering this question has been the lack of experimental model that recapitulate the human inflammation microenvironment. Conventional in vitro systems often fail to capture the three-dimensional architecture of tissues or critical multicellular interactions that shape immune responses in vivo. In this seminar, I will present our research investigating cell-cell interactions using our “inflammation-on-a-chip” micro-physiological system with a focus on critical signaling between myeloid cells, neutrophils, and the vascular endothelium.