Telocyte - a particular cell phenotype. Infrastructure, relationships and putative functions

Vol. 57 No. 1, 2016

ROMANIAN JOURNAL of MORPHOLOGY and EMBRYOLOGY

Nicolae Mirancea

Here we review on the infrastructure, relationships and putative role of a new cell phenotype termed telocyte. Ultrastructural and immunochemical characteristics of telocytes, their identification in different tissues, homo- and heterocellular telocyte s contacts and considerations concerning their putative role in normal as well as pathological conditions are largely presented. A special section of the paper is devoted to our opinion/hypothesis concerning the possibility that, to some extent, endoneurial fibroblast dendritic phenotype (existed in the peripheral nerve endoneurium) can be assimilated to the telocyte or, at least to the telocyte-like. In this respect, we report about a body of evidence that endoneurial fibroblasts dendritic cells share some infrastructural characteristics with telocyte phenotype. Telocytes involvement in pathology, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine is also debated.

Corresponding author: Nicolae Mirancea, Professor, PhD; e-mail: nick_mirancea@yahoo.com

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