Immunology

Second 'don't eat me' signal found on cancer cells

A second biological pathway that signals immune cells not to engulf and kill cancer cells has been identified by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Cardiology

Deleting a protein might reduce cardiovascular disease

Macrophages travel through our arteries, gobbling fat the way Pac-man gobbled ghosts. But fat-filled macrophages can narrow blood vessels and cause heart disease. Now, UConn Health researchers describe in Nature Cardiovascular ...

Immunology

Energizing the immune system to eat cancer

Immune cells called macrophages are supposed to serve and protect, but cancer has found ways to put them to sleep. Now researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania say they've identified how ...

Medical research

A golden ticket to faster muscle recovery

Anyone who has ever torn or injured a muscle knows that swelling, redness, and pain soon follow the injury: classic signs of inflammation. Inflammation is the body's natural response to promote healing, but prolonged, excess ...

HIV & AIDS

Progress toward HIV cure highlighted

A comprehensive collection of articles describing the broad scope and current status of this global effort is published in a special issue of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.

Medical research

Boosting the anti-inflammatory action of the immune system

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a molecular switch that causes immune cells called macrophages to clean up cellular debris caused by infections instead of contributing to inflammation ...

page 1 from 40

Macrophage

Macrophages (Greek: big eaters, from makros "large" + phagein "eat"; abbr. ) are white blood cells within tissues, produced by the division of monocytes. Human macrophages are about 21 micrometres in diameter. Monocytes and macrophages are phagocytes, acting in both non-specific defense (or innate immunity) as well as to help initiate specific defense mechanisms (or adaptive immunity) of vertebrate animals. Their role is to phagocytose (engulf and then digest) cellular debris and pathogens either as stationary or as mobile cells, and to stimulate lymphocytes and other immune cells to respond to the pathogen. They can be identified by specific expression of a number of proteins including CD14, CD11b, F4/80 (mice)/EMR1 (human), Lysozyme M, MAC-1/MAC-3 and CD68 by flow cytometry or immunohistochemical staining. They move by action of Amoeboid movement.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA