How stromal cells organise the immune system in the bone marrow and thus drive chronic rheumatic inflammation

In chronic inflammatory rheumatic diseases, the patient’s immune system attacks its own body with cytokines and antibodies. The immune cells producing these cytokines and antibodies are located in the inflamed tissue, as well as in the bone marrow. Here, stromal cells protect them against conventional therapies. If we understand how this protection works, we could treat rheumatic inflammation causally. This publication is the first to show how stromal cells specialise in supporting the survival of specific immune cells. This is crucial for developing new therapies against the immune cells hiding in the bone marrow driving chronic inflammation.