Sentences with phrase «myofibroblast cells»

It also causes overproduction of damaging and dysfunctional cardio myofibroblast cells.

The researchers, led by Benjamin Humphreys, MD, PhD, found that a rare population of stem cells located outside of blood vessels in mice become myofibroblast cells that secrete proteins that cause scar tissue.

Rare stem cells (in red) that give rise to scar - tissue secreting myofibroblast cells, here found near the blood vessels of a mouse kidney (in green).

Not exact matches

The most common cells found in healing wounds are myofibroblasts, which were thought to only form a scar.

Once inside the myofibroblasts, the virus downloads the transcription factors, which transform the cells into hepatocytes.

(The research also shows other subsets of smooth muscle cells were transitioning to cells resembling stem cells and myofibroblasts.)

Importantly, the ligands impaired myofibroblast function without affecting cell viability.

The orbital remodeling in TED is likely induced by infiltrating T lymphocytes and mast cells, which activate orbital fibroblast effector cells to either proliferate and form scar - producing cells called myofibroblasts or turn into pro-inflammatory fat cells.

Using a mouse model, the team identified a specific cell called a subepithelial myofibroblast as an essential source of both Wnts and RSPO3.

Previous research has demonstrated that Akt1 is at least partly responsible for the development of myofibroblasts, cells that migrate to the sites of injury to aid in wound healing.

«Previous research indicated that myofibroblasts are the cells responsible for fibrosis,» said Benjamin Humphreys, MD, PhD, senior author of the research paper and a physician scientist in the Renal Division at BWH.

It was unknown which kinds of stem cells form myofibroblasts, and where these stem cells are located.

Humphreys does caution that the cell population his lab found is responsible for about 60 percent of all organ myofibroblasts, which means that they seem to be the most dominant source, but that there may be other cells that also contribute to the myofibroblast population.

«Under normal circumstances, myofibroblasts stimulate wound healing, but when there's an ongoing injury to an organ (e.g., the liver of a hepatitis C patient, the heart of a patient with high blood pressure, or the kidney of a patient with diabetes) these proteins clog up normal functioning,» said Humphreys, a Harvard Medical School associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who leads the Harvard Stem Cell Institute Kidney Program.

During fibrosis these cells differentiate into myofibroblasts, causing scarring and organ failure.

One long - held hypothesis was that the stem cells that give rise to myofibroblasts are found in the bone marrow, but Humphreys» research disproves that.

By 3 to 7 days, these cells differentiated into myofibroblasts that secreted abundant extracellular matrix proteins and expressed smooth muscle α - actin to structurally support the necrotic area.

Research Interests: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); Crohn's disease; ulcerative colitis; animal models of IBD; mucosal T - cell death and survival; tolerance to gut microbiota; interactions between immune and non-immune cells; immune - driven angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis; intestinal fibrosis; intestinal myofibroblasts, extracellular matrix; systems biology; complex diseases

Basic fibroblast growth factor reduces scar by inhibiting the differentiation of epidermal stem cells to myofibroblasts via the Notch1 / Jagged1 pathway.

The researchers found that a specific stem / progenitor cell population was inhibited following radiation in mice missing Nrf2, and that alveolar type 2 cells in these mice were more likely to change into myofibroblasts — a cell type implicated in fibrosis.

The WUSTL research focuses on the role in heart disease of role - switching cells called myofibroblasts that proliferate in over-stressed or injured hearts.

If blood pressure is high enough to provoke fibroblasts to become myofibroblasts, the cells also may get stuck in their helper state.

But heart cells never truly regenerate in the damaged tissue, and myofibroblasts compensate for their absence by forming a stiff, collagenous scar that interferes with the heart's ability to maintain stable heart rhythms and to expand and contract forcefully to pump blood.

These cells, which were named myofibroblasts to reflect their double nature, secrete fibers to fill in a wound and then contract to bring together its edges.

Myofibroblasts can proliferate elsewhere in the body as well — although they may arise from different cell types in different tissues — and fibrotic remodeling of the kidney, liver (cirrhosis of the liver) and lungs follows a similar progression, Genin says.