Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Mesenchymal cells in health and disease

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

Subjects

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

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

References

  1. Koliaraki, V., Prados, A., Armaka, M. & Kollias, G. Nat. Immunol. 21, 974–982 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Davidson, S. et al. Nat. Rev. Immunol. 21, 704–717 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Lütge, M., Pikor, N. B. & Ludewig, B. Immunol. Rev. 302, 32–46 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Korsunsky, I. et al. Med. (N Y) 3, 481–518.e414 (2022).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Chen, Y., McAndrews, K. M. & Kalluri, R. Nat. Rev. Clin. Oncol. 18, 792–804 (2021).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Biffi, G. et al. Cancer Discov. 9, 282–301 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Armaka, M. et al. J. Exp. Med. 205, 331–337 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

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
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gian-Paolo Dotto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Christopher D. Buckley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. George Kollias
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vasiliki Koliaraki.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

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

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-022-01318-8

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Cancer

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Cancer newsletter — what matters in cancer research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get what matters in cancer research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Cancer