Grant: Project Grant

Lay Abstract: We discovered that inside the belly (abdomen) there is a vast number of immune cells (macrophages) that have for the most part been ignored. We recently showed that they may be important in helping to heal organs after an injury, but they may also help heal tumors after ablation therapy. Moreover, if the healing is exaggerated (too much of a good thing), the macrophages form adhesions which are rope like structures in your abdomen that can cause obstruction of bowels or secondary infertility in women. There is no cure. We discovered that the macrophages must attach to the injury to help heal it, but under some circumstances when all the abdominal macrophages clump together and form an aggregate this leads to adhesion formation. A similar event happens when a tumor enters the abdominal cavity. The initial recruitment of macrophages leads to a second wave of huge numbers of additional macrophages aggregating together. We have noticed that the macrophages grab on to each other to aggregate via a family of molecules called scavenger receptors. We will investigate whether targeting these molecules will reduce healing, adhesion formation and cancer. Together with collaborators we will examine whether we can improve our drugs to inhibit just the macrophage adhesion formation and tumor re-growth without affecting the healing.