Illustration of the interstitium, fluid-filled spaces supported by a network of collagen bundles, lined on one side with cellsJILL GREGORY, REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM MOUNT SINAI HEALTH SYSTEM, LICENSED UNDER CC-BY-ND.For years, scientists have fixed tissue and looked at it under the microscope in order to better understand the body. In a study published yesterday (March 27) in Scientific Reports, a team of researchers used a new in vivo microscopy technique to present evidence that the human interstitium—the space between cells—is more like a matrix of collagen bundles interspersed with fluid than the densely-packed stacks of connective tissue it appears to be in fixed slides.
News reports have suggested that this interstitium could represent a widespread organ in the body, whose connections with the lymphatic system might be involved in cancer metastasis. While researchers not involved in the study agree that the interstitium likely plays diverse roles in the human body, they are reticent to call it a new organ.
“It is fair to say that histologists [and] pathologists have long known that there is an interstitial space and that it contains fluid,” Anirban Maitra, a pathologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center who did not participate in the work, writes in an email to The Scientist. “The claim that it is a hitherto undiscovered organ, and the largest one ever at that, seems a stretch,” he ...
