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

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.