Collagen Creators

As men get older, nightly trips to the loo become more common. For some, it's because of lower urinary tract dysfunction (LUTD). It’s caused by inflammation of the prostate. This leads to prostate fibrosis, that is, the build-up of collagen. To help develop treatments for this stiffer, scar-like tissue, researchers tried to identify the cells needed for collagen production here. They genetically labelled and tracked suspected collagen-producing cells – based on previous research – in mouse prostates, which were inflamed by infecting them with E.coli. As expected, infection led to increased collagen production but only in some of the tracked cells. These cells were fibrocytes and they were also identified in inflamed human prostate samples visualised via fluorescence microscopy (pictured, cells concurrently stained green, magenta and white). These fibrocytes were found in the same regions where collagen accumulates in the prostates of men with LUTD, betraying their likely involvement in the development of fibrosis.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Brandon R. Scharpf and Hannah Ruetten, and colleagues
• Department of Comparative Biosciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in and on the cover of Disease Models & Mechanisms, January 2025