You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Leading article
StellaTUM: current consensus and discussion on pancreatic stellate cell research
  1. Mert Erkan1,
  2. Guido Adler2,
  3. Minoti V Apte3,
  4. Max G Bachem4,
  5. Malte Buchholz5,
  6. Sönke Detlefsen6,
  7. Irene Esposito7,
  8. Helmut Friess1,
  9. Thomas M Gress5,
  10. Hans-Joerg Habisch4,
  11. Rosa F Hwang8,
  12. Robert Jaster9,
  13. Jörg Kleeff1,
  14. Günter Klöppel7,
  15. Claus Kordes10,
  16. Craig D Logsdon8,
  17. Atsushi Masamune11,
  18. Christoph W Michalski1,
  19. Junseo Oh12,
  20. Phoebe A Phillips3,
  21. Massimo Pinzani13,
  22. Carolin Reiser-Erkan1,
  23. Hidekazu Tsukamoto14,
  24. Jeremy Wilson3
  1. 1Department of Surgery, Klinikum rechts der Isar, TU München, Munich, Germany
  2. 2Department of Internal Medicine, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany
  3. 3Faculty of Medicine, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  4. 4Department of Clinical Chemistry, Universitätsklinikum Ulm, Ulm, Germany
  5. 5Department of Internal Meidicine, Universitätsklinikum Marburg, Marburg, Germany
  6. 6Department of Pathology, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark
  7. 7Institute of Pathology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, TU München, Munich, Germany
  8. 8Department of Surgical Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
  9. 9Department of Internal Medicine, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany
  10. 10Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectious Diseases, Universitätsklinikum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
  11. 11Division of Gastroenterology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Tohoku, Japan
  12. 12Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, Korea University Graduate School of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
  13. 13Department of Internal Medicine, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
  14. 14Southern California Research Center for ALPD and Cirrhosis, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Mert Erkan, Department of General Surgery, Technische Universität München, Klinikum rechts der Isar, 81675 Munich, Germany; m.mert.erkan{at}googlemail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2011-301220

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    The field of pancreatic stellate cell (PSC) biology is very young, as the essential in-vitro tools to study these cells (ie, methods to isolate and culture PSC) were only developed as recently as in 1998. Nonetheless, there has been an exponential increase in research output in this field over the past decade, with numerous research groups around the world focusing their energies into elucidating the biology and function of these cells. It is now well established that PSC are responsible for producing the stromal reaction (fibrosis) of two major diseases of the pancreas—chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Despite exponentially increasing data, the methods for studying PSC remain variable. Although within individual laboratories methods are consistent, different methodologies used by various research groups make it difficult to compare results and conclusions. This article is not a review article on the functions of PSC. Instead, members of the Pancreatic Star Alliance (http://www.pancreaticstaralliance.com) discuss here and consolidate current knowledge, to outline and delineate areas of consensus or otherwise (eg, with regard to methodological approaches) and, more importantly, to identify essential directions for future research.

    Pancreatic stellate cells

    Hepatic stellate cells (HSC) were first described by Karl von Kupffer in 1876; however, similar cells in the pancreas were first observed in the 1980s.1–3 In 1998, Apte et al4 and Bachem et al5 isolated and cultured PSC.4 5 In the normal pancreas, PSC are located in close proximity to the basal aspect of pancreatic acinar cells. In sections immunostained for the marker desmin (a cytoskeletal protein), quiescent PSC can be seen as cells with a central cell body and long cytoplasmic projections extending along the base of adjacent acinar cells similar to that of pericytes in the mammary gland. …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Figures presented in this article are modified from the figures previously published in Cancers 2010, in which authors hold the copyright and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) is a licensee.

    • Funding Funding of the meeting and work by the Pancreatic Star Alliance described in this review is supported by grant fundings to ME, from the DFG (GZ: ER 563/3-1, AOBJ: 577801), from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung - BMBF -ME, MB, IE, HF, TG, JK, CWM) within the “National Genome Research Network” (NGFN-Plus; 01GS08115) and Stiftung Chirurgie TU München. Part of the meeting costs have been sponsored by Abbott.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.