Vorselen Lab

Welcome to the website of the Vorselen Lab of mechanobiology and quantitative cellular immunology!

What we do

Immune cells encounter an enormous variety of threats, from small, rigid bacteria, to squishy cancer cells and oddly shaped microplastics. The physical properties of these targets turn out to be key in shaping how our immune system responds. In the Vorselen Lab, we are fascinated by how physical forces influence cell behavior. We focus on innate immune cells, the body’s first responders to these threats. Our approach is profoundly interdisciplinary, combining chemical synthesis of custom microparticles, with quantitative imaging, molecular biology and biophysical approaches to study immune functions.

A central focus of our lab is phagocytosis, or simply put: eating by cells. This process is a therapeutic target in some of today’s most pressing health problems, including cancer, atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative disease. Understanding how macrophages (specific immune cells) respond to specific properties of these targets will be key to designing better targeted therapies. From a biophysical perspective, phagocytosis is a fast, highly dynamic process: cells generate force with their cytoskeleton, bend their membranes, use adhesive forces and use sensing mechanisms to engulf their targets. The lessons we learn from phagocytosis apply broadly to other immune processes, as well as to how cells move and interact with one another..

We build new tools to control the physical inputs cells receive and to measure the forces cells generate. One example is “the stress ball for the cell”: soft hydrogel microspheres that can be adapted to trigger diverse immune responses. They are tunable, mimic key physical characteristics of cancer cells (other models are up to 10 million-fold more rigid), and can be kneaded and squeezed by cells, which enables their function as cellular force sensors. We combine these techniques with quantitative microscopy and cellular perturbations (genetic, pharmaceutical). Together, this allows us to both control the input that immune cells receive, and gives us a very detailed readout of immune functions, allowing us to investigate immune pathways with exceptional precision.

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