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Mesenchymal cells in health and disease

Nature Immunology volume 23, pages 1395–1398 (2022)Cite this article

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On 3–8 June 2022, the First International Aegean Conference on Mesenchymal Cells in Health & Disease took place in Chania, Crete, and brought together clinicians and scientists who work on mesenchymal or stromal cell biology across different fields including immunity, inflammation and cancer.

Paraphrasing Plato and many after him, “simplifying baffling complexities into a unified vision is a necessary precondition for understanding and for taking action”. The humble fibroblast has been the workhorse for many in vitro studies since the heyday of mammalian cell culture. Yet its ancestry and relationship to other mesenchymal cells remains unclear. Fibroblasts are now receiving deserved attention as central players and often the primary drivers of many pathological processes ranging from inflammation and fibrosis to altered immunity and cancer1,2. During the course of these investigations, the ‘fibroblast’ has been assigned many different names and functions, raising the important question of whether or not this cell exists as a fundamental entity, or whether it is a transition state between cell types of the mesenchymal lineage.

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Fig. 1: Mesenchymal heterogeneity in health and disease.
Fig. 2: Mesenchymal activation and downstream functions in health and disease.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center ‘Alexander Fleming’, Vari, Greece

    Vasiliki Koliaraki

  2. Cutaneous Biology Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA

    Gian-Paolo Dotto

  3. Personalized Cancer Prevention Program, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Gian-Paolo Dotto

  4. International Cancer Prevention Institute, Epalinges, Switzerland

    Gian-Paolo Dotto

  5. Rheumatology Research Group, Institute for Inflammation and Ageing, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK

    Christopher D. Buckley

  6. Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Christopher D. Buckley

  7. Institute for Innovation, Biomedical Sciences Research Center ‘Alexander Fleming’, Vari, Greece

    George Kollias

  8. Department of Physiology, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    George Kollias

Authors
  1. Vasiliki Koliaraki
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  2. Gian-Paolo Dotto
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  3. Christopher D. Buckley
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  4. George Kollias
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Correspondence to Vasiliki Koliaraki.

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Koliaraki, V., Dotto, GP., Buckley, C.D. et al. Mesenchymal cells in health and disease. Nat Immunol 23, 1395–1398 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-022-01318-8

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