Speaker: Inga Saknite, Biophotonics Laboratory, University of Latvia (Riga, Latvia), Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tennessee, USA)
Title: Bedside videomicroscopy of blood cell dynamics in skin microvasculature for clinical impact
Location: Room ED38, Building E, Faculty of Medicine, Brabois-Santé Campus – Teams link
Abstract: Cutaneous microcirculation regulates the exchange of nutrients, heat and inflammatory cells between blood and tissue, and plays a significant role in many diseases, including cancer and hypersensitivity reactions. Visualization of individual cell motion in a single cutaneous blood vessel may further enhance our understanding of disease pathology and enable the development of novel biomarkers. In this study, we characterized individual cell motion in the upper dermal microvasculature of healthy human skin by noninvasive reflectance confocal video microscopy. In addition to visualizing previously described adherent and rolling leukocytes, we visualized temporary stopping of leukocytes (“paused” leukocytes) in human skin microvasculature, which has been previously described in a broad range of animal species (also referred to as plugging, stopping, trapping or retaining of leukocytes). This work provides new insights into cell dynamics in intact human skin blood vessels. Through the detailed data acquisition protocol and method to extract quantitative parameters from reflectance confocal videos, this study will enable further exploration of the diagnostic potential for various clinical applications.
Biography: Dr. Saknite received her PhD in physics from the University of Latvia in 2016. She was then awarded the Fulbright Scholarship to advance her translational research career at the Beckman Laser Institute of the University of California, Irvine. From 2017 until 2021, Dr. Saknite was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Vanderbilt Dermatology Translational Research Clinic (VDTRC.org), and was named the inaugural Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Mentor of the Year in 2021. She has received several additional awards, including the Abstract Achievement Award at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology and the best talk award at the Annual Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Association Symposium. In 2024, she became a Senior Member of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
La visite de Inga Saknite est financée par le programme Osmose (Campus France) et est intégrée au programme interdisciplinaire MAT-PULSE (LUE).