Immune cells called neutrophils are first responders to infection and also play an important role in atherosclerosis. Neutrophils rapidly move within and through blood vessels to get to sites of inflammation. Professor Andreas Hidalgo and his group at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) Madrid and the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention (IPEK) found that mouse neutrophils rely on platelets to help find such sites. Neutrophils (green) extended protrusions into blood vessels. When these protrusions came into contact with platelets (red), the neutrophils migrated into the surrounding tissue to carry out their inflammatory functions. Preventing these neutrophil-platelet interactions alleviated collateral inflammatory damage to tissues in several injury models in mice.
Publication by Prof. Hidalgo in Science
26.12.2014 -
