Kanagawa Institute of Technology
Keio University
Exploratory Research Center on Life and Living Systems (ExCELLS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences
/ National Institute for Physiological Sciences / National Institute for Basic Biology
A group of researchers, including Professor Yoshiko Hiroi of the Department of Creative Engineering at Kanagawa Institute of Technology; Takayuki Nakamura, a graduate student at the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University (at the time of the research); Professor Akira Funahashi and Senior Assistant Professor Takahiro Yamada of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the same university; Assistant Professor Koki Okabe of the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo; Professor Makoto Tominaga and Associate Professor Shigenori Nonaka of the Exploratory Research Center on Life and Living Systems (ExCELLS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences; and Project Associate Professor Yasuhiro Kamei, Project Assistant Professor Tasuku Sakamoto, and Dr. Atsushi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Basic Biology, has successfully confirmed using two different measurement methods that cells migrating to close a wound are more than one degree Celsius warmer than non-migrating cells. At the same time, they obtained data showing that when stationary cells were targeted and heated one by one with an infrared laser, the heated cells began to move. This research result not only provides strong evidence that temperature differences occur in the microscopic space of a cell but also suggests that these temperature differences may have physiological functions. The application of this method is expected to lead to the development of methods for treating hard-to-heal wounds quickly and safely.
This research was published in the academic journalOptics Continuumon May 3 (US Eastern Time).
Please see below for the full press release.