Modelling inflammation in the build-up of arterial plaques

Chemokine transport dynamics and vascular disease (Mr Willy Bonneuil)

Professor James Moore is supervising a PhD student looking at the role of inflammation in atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty deposits in arteries. Most fatty deposits (called plaques) have inflammation as a hallmark, and all inflammation depends on chemokines – molecules that attract immune cells and position them precisely where they are required. Chemokines do this by forming a ‘concentration gradient’ where the levels of chemokine levels gradually increase from one part of a tissue to another. The immune cells move along this gradient, attracted towards the chemokines, to reach the perfect position. There are around 40 different chemokines and each has unique properties that influence how they form these gradients. This studentship will recreate the features of a chemokine gradient in the outermost part of a lymphatic vessel wall. They will first develop a model to measure – for the first time – migration of cells to known, controlled chemokine concentrations in real-time. They will then adapt this model to include lymphatic blood vessel cells, and study the effects in the absence and presence of molecules that activate inflammation. The results will shed light on inflammation in atherosclerosis and will provide a model for other to use to study immune cell behaviour in other situations.