Analysis of immune cell chemotaxis and signal integration

In response to an injury, immune cells are recruited to fight off infecting microbes and clear cellular damage. A number of chemicals, called chemoattractants, are produced at or near sites of infection and inflammation and diffuse into the surrounding tissue. Immune cells sense these chemoattractants and move in the direction where their concentration is greatest, a process termed chemotaxis, and thus locate the source of the attractants and associated targets. In this talk I will present my work using mathematical modeling and experiments to understand how immune cells detect and interpret multiple chemoattractants and convert these signals into directed migration. I will conclude my talk by discussing the application of this work, and mathematical modeling in general, to the drug discovery process in the pharmaceutical industry.