Chapters authored
The Wound-Healing Portal Hypertensive Response
Portal hypertensive inflammation is associated with chronic liver diseases. The three successive and overlapping systemic inflammatory phenotypes, i.e., neurogenic, immune, and endocrine, which characterize the wound-healing response, are expressed by the portal venous system upon liver injury. The diverse functions of hepatic stellate cells in homeostasis and inflammation indicate the versatile nature of these mesenchymal-derived cells, which could adopt numerous phenotypes according to the interstitial microenvironmental characteristics. Consequently, these inflammatory phenotypes could represent the reexpression of two extra-embryonic functional axis, i.e., coelomic-amniotic and trophoblastic-vitelline, whose coupling in the portal system would induce a gastrulation-related phenotype. Therefore, hepatic stellate cells and liver-specific mesenchymal cells could recapitulate and couple these abovementioned extra-embryonic phenotypes during portal hypertension. These hepatic cellular population, thanks to their potential ability to integrate and reexpress functions showing analogies to extra-embryonic functions, display characteristics of stem/progenitor cells. In this way, during the development of portal hypertension, hepatic stellate cells not only could reexpress extra-embryonic functions, but also could adapt themselves in order to induce a gastrulation-related process in the space of Disse. Hence, by understanding the ontogenic interactions between hepatic stellate cells and the host inflammatory response in portal hypertension, it is possible to design effective therapeutic and prophylactic strategies to avoid or reverse wound-like hypertensive response.
Part of the book: Translational Studies on Inflammation