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Review
. 2021 Mar 23:8:643973.
doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.643973. eCollection 2021.

Intestinal Mucosal Wound Healing and Barrier Integrity in IBD-Crosstalk and Trafficking of Cellular Players

Affiliations
Review

Intestinal Mucosal Wound Healing and Barrier Integrity in IBD-Crosstalk and Trafficking of Cellular Players

Katrin Sommer et al. Front Med (Lausanne). .

Abstract

The intestinal epithelial barrier is carrying out two major functions: restricting the entry of potentially harmful substances while on the other hand allowing the selective passage of nutrients. Thus, an intact epithelial barrier is vital to preserve the integrity of the host and to prevent development of disease. Vice versa, an impaired intestinal epithelial barrier function is a hallmark in the development and perpetuation of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Besides a multitude of genetic, molecular and cellular alterations predisposing for or driving barrier dysintegrity in IBD, the appearance of intestinal mucosal wounds is a characteristic event of intestinal inflammation apparently inducing breakdown of the intestinal epithelial barrier. Upon injury, the intestinal mucosa undergoes a wound healing process counteracting this breakdown, which is controlled by complex mechanisms such as epithelial restitution, proliferation and differentiation, but also immune cells like macrophages, granulocytes and lymphocytes. Consequently, the repair of mucosal wounds is dependent on a series of events including coordinated trafficking of immune cells to dedicated sites and complex interactions among the cellular players and other mediators involved. Therefore, a better understanding of the crosstalk between epithelial and immune cells as well as cell trafficking during intestinal wound repair is necessary for the development of improved future therapies. In this review, we summarize current concepts on intestinal mucosal wound healing introducing the main cellular mediators and their interplay as well as their trafficking characteristics, before finally discussing the clinical relevance and translational approaches to therapeutically target this process in a clinical setting.

Keywords: IBD; intestinal epithelial barrier function; intestinal epithelial cells; mucosal healing; wound healing.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Contribution of some of the most important immune cells to intestinal wound healing. Circulating immune cells are recruited to the wound area by cell trafficking processes. After entering the tissue these cells may undergo differentiation processes and secrete various mediators, which promote or repress mucosal wound healing (for details cf. main text).

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