niversity of Calgary scientists have discovered how to capture “live” images of immune cells inside the lungs.
A group at the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases at the Cumming School of Medicine is the first in the world to find a way to record, in real-time, how the immune system battles bacteria impacting the alveoli, or air sacs, in the lungs of mice. The discovery, published in Cell, has already provided new insights about the immune systems’ cleaners, called alveolar macrophages, once thought to be stationary. The scientists observed the macrophages at work, crawling over, between and around the alveolar spaces in search of bacteria and viruses.
“It makes sense that macrophages would move around, but we could only hypothesize this because we couldn’t see them in action. Now we can,” says Dr. Paul Kubes, PhD, principal investigator. “There are many more alveoli in the lungs than macrophages, and these tiny cleaners are very efficient at servicing every air sac.”
