title: Telocyte - a particular cell phenotype. Infrastructure, relationships and putative functions.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant and Animal Cytobiology, Institute of Biology Bucharest of Romanian Academy, Romania; nick_mirancea@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Nicolae
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mirancea
mesh_terms: D002450:Cell Communication; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000166:cytology; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000166:cytology; D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype; D044968:Regenerative Medicine; D000067170:Telocytes / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism*