Macrophages: Biology and Role in the Pathology of Diseases

Part I Macrophage: Origin, Activation And Polarization.- Blood monocytes and their subsets in health and disease.- Polarized activation of macrophages.- Alternative activation of macrophages: concepts and prospects.- Regulatory macrophages and the maintenance of homeostasis.- Part II Macrophages And Their Diverse Functions.- Phagocytosis.- The antimicrobial functions of macrophages.- Vascular modulatory functions of macrophages.- Part III Macrophages In Different Tissues.- Airway macrophages: sentinels of health.- Microglial ontogeny and functions in shaping brain circuits.- Kupffer cells in health and disease.- Intestinal Macrophages: Specialized antigen-presenting cells at the front line.- Part IV Macrophages In Pathology.- The wound macrophage - Macrophages and the entrance of resolution phase lipid mediators.- Macrophages in sepsis progression.- Adaptive characteristics of innate immune responses in macrophages.- African trypanosomiasis as paradigm for involvement of the mononuclear phagocyte system in pathogenicity during parasite infection.- Macrophages in obesity and insulin resistance.- Macrophages govern the progression and termination of inflammation in atherosclerosis and metabolic diseases.- Myelomonocytic subsets in tumor microenvironment.- Tumor associated macrophages.- Part V Transcriptional And Epigenetic Mechanisms.- Role of NF-kB activation in macrophages.- Interferon Regulatory Factors: Role in transcriptional regulation of macrophage plasticity and activation.- Kruppel-like factors in Monocyte-Macrophage Biology.- Regulation of macrophage polarization by the STAT-SOCS signaling axis.- Functions of the large Maf transcription factors and macrophages.- The Control of Gene Expression in Macrophages.- Role of microRNA in macrophage activation and polarization.- Part VI Systems Biology Of Macrophages.- The macrophage transcriptome.- Omics approaches in macrophage biology.- Appendix.

Alberto Mantovani was born in Milan in 1948. He graduated (summa cum laude) in 1973 in Medicine at the University of Milan and in 1976 he specialized in Oncology at the University of Pavia. Since 2001 he is full Professor of General Pathology, School of Medicine, State University of Milan. Since October 2005 he is Scientific Director of Istituto Clinico Humanitas, Milan, Italy and President and founder of the Fondazione Humanitas per la Ricerca. In addition, the discovery that pro- and anti- inflammatory signals not only regulate the level of chemokine production but also the level of receptions offers a new level of understanding of how the system functions and possible targets for therapeutic interventions. Finally, his group has cloned the PTX3 (cDNA and genome, human and mouse), the first member of the long pentraxin family and defined his function in innate immunity and inflammation.

Dr. Biswas completed his Ph.D. in Biotechnology (Cellular Immunology) at Banaras Hindu University, India in 2002. Thereafter, he extended his Ph.D. work on chemokine biology as a postdoctoral visiting scientist at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri", Milan (Italy) working in the group of Prof. Alberto Mantovani and Antonio Sica. During this period, he was awarded a fellowship of the Alfredo Leonardi and G. Pfeiffer Foundation (2003). His principal research contributions include a) the first demonstration of the chemokine, MCP-1-induced activation of murine macrophages and its underlying mechanisms and b) the molecular characterization of tumor associated macrophages (Collaborative project with National Cancer Institute-Frederick, USA). In 2005, he joined the Bioinformatics Institute of A*STAR in Singapore as Research Scientist (In-Charge) of the Cell Interaction group, before moving to SIgN in 2006. Dr. Biswas is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.

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