Lymphatic vessels—the body’s hidden highway for immune cells—are being mapped in detail to find new ways to block inflammation, stop cancer spread, and improve vaccine delivery. The problem is that while lymphatics have long been known to shuttle immune cells to lymph nodes and to carry metastatic tumour cells, their biology remains poorly understood. This gap means we lack targeted therapies for conditions where lymphatics play a central role: chronic inflammation, skin and breast cancer metastasis, and weak immune responses to emerging infections. This research has already uncovered two distinct molecular mechanisms—one controlling immune cell entry during inflammation, another governing tumour cell entry during metastasis. The team is now focusing on a lymphatic surface molecule called LYVE-1, which they believe could be a key control point. If successful, this fundamental science could lead to drugs that block tumour cells from entering lymphatics, therapies that dampen harmful inflammation, and vaccines engineered to hitch a more efficient ride through the lymphatic network—boosting immunity against new infectious threats without requiring a fully developed practical application today.
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We are investigating how cells enter and move within lymphatic vessels so that in the future we can develop new therapies to block inflammation, prevent tumour spread, and make the delivery of vaccines to emerging infections more efficient. The lymphatic vessels form a dense network that intertwines the blood circulation and whose main functions are to maintain fluid balance and to transport cells carrying foreign antigen to the lymph nodes where they meet T and B cells and stimulate the immune response. Importantly, the lymphatics also contribute to diseases such as cancer by allowing metastatic tumours (e.g. skin and breast cancer) to spread to other parts of the body, and they act as a reservoir for malignant cells. Even though the involvement of lymphatics in disease have been known for a long time, their biology is still not well understood and so research in my group is dedicated to understanding how immune cells and tumours enter and navigate within the lymphatics. Thus far we have discovered that in inflammation, entry of immune cells carrying proteins from infectious agents depends critically on recognition of inflammation-induced protein receptors on the surface of lymphatic vessels, and that this is obligatory for the generation of the immune response to infection. We have also identified a separate mechanism that controls tumour cell entry to the lymphatics during lymph node metastasis in murine tumours and humans. We are also particularly interested in researching a molecule in lymphatics called LYVE-1 and we anticipate that further research in this area will reveal new ways to block inflammation, and to promote protective immunity to emerging infectious agents by enhancing vaccine delivery.
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