TABLE 1.

Summary of the analytical approach to drug-phagocyte interactions

Type of analysis	Parameters of interest	Problems
In vivo
Animal models (infection and inflammation)  Humans (health, infection, and inflammation)	Global therapeutic efficacy in one specific system, cell morphology and number in blood and tissues, levels of mediators (in serum and other fluids), samples for ex vivo studies	Ethics, administration schedule, statistical analysis, interspecies differences, interindividual variability
Rebuk skin window	PMN chemotaxis	Inconsistent reproducibility
Ex vivo
Animal and human, PMN (blood and tissues), monocytes (blood), macrophages (fluids, monocyte derived)	Cell functions after complex in vivo interactions (drugs, mediators, cell-cell contacts)	Isolation procedures, phagocyte pools and subsets, phagocyte status
In vitro
Animal and human phagocytes, cell lines	Cell functions in precisely defined conditions, antigens, phagocyte progenitor maturation	Various techniques and stimuli (various activation pathways) standardization, artifactual milieu and conditions, extrapolation of results
Specific research on cells and cell lines	Transduction pathways, cellular targets, gene transcription	Insufficient knowledge, no highly specific activators and inhibitors