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Updated: Jun 24, 2025
Isolation and Characterization of Dendritic Cells and Macrophages from the Mouse Intestine
Published on: May 21, 2012
Stromal-Like Cells Are Found in Peripheral Blood of Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Correlate With
Amanda M Honan1, Gillian E Jacobsen1,2, Hannah Drum1
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA.
Introduction:
Recent studies have identified a critical role of stromal-immune cell interactions in immunity and immune tolerance. Transcriptomic profiling has implicated stromal cells in immune-mediated disorders including the 2 common forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn's disease (CD), and ulcerative colitis (UC). Stromal-immune interactions may edify inflammatory state and the development of IBD-related complications such as fibrosis, yet the lack of protein markers has hampered studying stromal-immune perturbation.
Methods:
In this study, we designed a 40-color spectral flow cytometry assay to characterize hematopoietic and nonhematopoietic cells in intestinal biopsies and matched blood samples from patients with CD or UC.
Results:
We identified circulating stromal-like cells that are significantly more abundant in IBD blood samples than in healthy controls. Those cells expressed podoplanin (PDPN), a commonly used marker for fibroblasts, and they were associated with activated and memory T and B cells and altered natural killer cell, monocyte, and macrophage populations. PDPN + cells in the blood correlated with PDPN + cells in the colon. Principal component analysis distinctly separated healthy blood samples from IBD blood samples, with stromal-like cells and B-cell subtypes dominating the IBD signature; Pearson correlation detected an association between PDPN + stromal-like cells and B-cell populations in IBD blood and gut biopsies.
Discussion:
These observations suggest that PDPN + cells in the blood may serve as a biomarker of IBD. Understanding the relationship between stromal cells and immune cells in the intestine and the blood may provide a window into disease pathogenesis and insight into therapeutic targets for IBD.
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