A team of researchers has uncovered a previously unknown compensatory mechanism found in liver disease. If Kupffer cells (KCs), a specific kind of immune cells found in the liver, become impaired by tissue scarring, immune cells originating in the bone marrow flow to the organ, where they form larger cell clusters to perform the same function.
, damage to the liver causes a buildup of scar tissue known as fibrosis, which impairs the organ's function. In the advanced stage of this tissue remodeling process, the area around the Kupffer cells also undergoes fateful changes—with consequences that were unknown until now.
Dr. Moritz Peiseler, a scientist and physician at the Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology at Charité and the first author of the study, describes what takes place during scarring and remodeling of the liver:"More and more liver cells die off. Connective tissue forms all through the organ and around the small blood vessels."
The newly formed KC-like syncytia take over the filtration function of the actual Kupffer cells from then on. Since they have to exist inside changed blood vessels, the immune cells that have migrated to the site adapt, forming net-like structures that turn them into an effective microbial filter. The researchers describe the molecular mechanisms involved in these processes in their work.
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