Recent studies in mouse in our lab have indicated that macrophages appear to be associated with sprouting vessel tips at all stages during wound angiogenesis and subsequent resolution, and complementary live imaging approaches in zebrafish reveal mechanistic links whereby macrophages both nudge away inhibitory neutrophils and supply positive sprouting signals to vessels and before switching phenotype to actively drive vessel resolution after the wound has healed. 

We are also interested in the wound hyperpigmentation response. We have modelled in zebrafish how melanonocytes are drawn to wounds and shown that this recruitment is inflammation dependent because when we knock down immune cells then no pigment cells are recruited to the wound.  This work sets the scene for a screen to identify signals released directly (or indirectly) by inflammatory cells that might be therapeutically dampened to inhibit wound dyspigmentation in the clinic.

A third “less well studied” wound cell lineage is the adipocyte. Our genetic and imaging approaches in Drosophila pupae have revealed an entirely unexpected role for adipocytes in the repair process; these cells, previously presumed to be immotile, are seen to “swim” towards wounds and collaborate with immune cells to clear the wound of debris and express AMPs for wound sterilisation. This study caught the interest of the New York Times.  We are keen to know how these observations might extrapolate to vertebrate wounds.

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Gurevich, D, Severn, C, Twomey, C, Greenhough, A, Cash, J, Toye, A, Mellor, H & Martin, P 2018, 'Live imaging of wound angiogenesis reveals macrophage orchestrated vessel sprouting and regression', EMBO Journal, vol. 37, no. 13, e97786. https://doi.org/10.15252/embj.201797786

Franz, A, Wood, W & Martin, P 2018, 'Fat Body Cells Are Motile and Actively Migrate to Wounds to Drive Repair and Prevent Infection', Developmental Cell, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 460-470.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2018.01.026