Development of Encapsulated Macrophage Cells Based Immunomodulatory Platform

Abstract

Macrophages act as the first line of defense and play a vital role in inducing inflammatory response at the event of some injury. These macrophages are of two types:M1 phenotype(classically activated)has pro inflammatory response,defends against microbial infections and M2 phenotype(alternately activated) has anti-inflammatory response, helps in the healing of wound.

The wound healing process requires the participation of various skin cell like keratinocytes,fibroblasts, endothelial cells, immune cells and extracellular matrix. This process contains three stages: 1) inflammation, 2) proliferation and 3) maturation. The normal wound healing process takes around two to four weeks but the wounds which fail to be healed in the span of three months are termed as chronic wounds. Different treatments such as stem cell therapy, delivery of compounds such as peptides, cytokines, growth factors directly to the targeted wound site by microbeads encapsulation have been investigated.

Immunomodulation can be described as the process of altering the immune response of the body to a certain stimuli according to the desired level. This work involves the enhancement of the immune response towards the repair of chronic wounds by creating an immuno-modulatory platform. For this two polysaccharides namely pectin and polygalacturonic acid (PgA) were used to develop a polymer which can be used to encapsulate unactivated macrophage cells into microbeads and aid in their proliferation and activation to M2 phenotype. These beads can be delivered to the specific target sit where they can induce anti inflammatory response and help in healing the wound bed.