Insall Lab

The Insall Lab at UCL: Illuminating How Cells Decide Where to Move

At University College London, the Insall Lab—led by Professor Robert Insall (FRSE)—delivers pioneering insights into how cells sense and navigate their environment through a blend of experiments, computational modeling, and theoretical innovation.

Image from Sinking while you swim: A dual role for CCR7 in
leukocyte migration, H. Donnally et al. 2023
Computational model of immune cell migration by David Versluis

Computational modelling

Our lab champions an iterative framework where mathematical modeling guides experiments, and experimental results refine models.

Immune cell chemotaxis

We investigate how immune cells know where to move to, and how they can efficiently migrate as a group

Macropinocytosis by macrophages, video by Anamul Hoque
False colour of actin in macrophages
video by Anamul Hoque and Virginia Silio
Overlaid videos of AI-tracked macrophages chemotaxing to c5a
Images by Abhimanyu Kiran
Visualisation by David Versluis

Integrating modelling and experiments

We use computational methods to enhance the analysis of our experimental data, and use our experiments to inform out computational approaches.

Dictyostelium chemotaxis

We investigate what governs Dictyostelium chemotaxis

Dictyostelium cell migrating under agarose in the presence of folic acid as a chemoattractant, expressing mStayGold-Abi. Images by Lucija Mijanovic