Colloquium: Prof. Francis Lin

Francis Lin
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manitoba 

Studying Cell Migration in Chemical and Electrical Guiding Environments
using Microfluidic Devices

Friday, March 25, 2014 4:01pm-4:50pm

Cell migration underlies many physiological processes ranging from immune
response to wound healing and to cancer invasion. Diverse environmental factors such as
chemical gradients and electric fields can guide the migration and trafficking of various
cell types in tissues. Rapid development of microfluidics provides powerful quantitative
test bed for cell migration analysis in controlled cellular microenvironments. Toward this
direction, we focus on using microfluidic devices to study chemotactic and electrotactic
migration of different cell types. In this talk, I will first provide relevant background for
this research field followed by an overview of my research program. Then I will discuss a
few focused studies including 1) lymphocyte migration in lymph node
microenvironments; 2) lymphocyte electrotaxis analysis in vitro and in vivo; 3)
experimental and modelling studies of immune cell migration in competing chemical
gradient and electric field; 4) chemotaxis and electrotaxis analysis of cancer cells and
stem cells.