Coating M-CSF on plastic surface results in the generation of increased numbers of macrophages in vitro.

Macrophages are one of the important cell types in the innate immune system that are present in various anatomical regions of the body and promote early control of pathogens. The relative proportion of macrophages in various lymphoid and non-lymphoid regions is small, and as such it is tedious to purify these cells to homogeneity. Culture of bone marrow precursors with macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) results in their differentiation to macrophages, however this procedure results in low numbers of differentiated macrophages. Herein we reveal a new approach of generating increased numbers of differentiated macrophages from bone marrow precursors. We show that M-CSF delivered in a plate-bound form results in the differentiation of significantly more macrophages in comparison to soluble M-CSF. Furthermore, the macrophages differentiated with plate-bound M-CSF display increased metabolic activity and cell death following infection with pathogens.