Researcher at Feinstein Institute is part of team that IDs ‘new’ organ system

A scientist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset and a team of collaborators have identified a new organ system — one of the most extensive in the human body — according to the group’s report in a scientific journal.

Dr. Petros Constantinos Benias and his colleagues have identified what has long thought to be layers of dense connective tissues, but in actuality serves a unique role as the body’s main “shock absorbers.” This series of interconnected, fluid-filled compartments may have powerful implications to better understand the body in health and disease. It is found around the heart and lungs, on blood vessels, under the skin, and surrounding other major organs, he said.

It is formally called the interstitium, and while its existence is not entirely new to science, researchers are appreciating it anew, thanks to painstaking study that has revealed it as a vast highway that cancer cells might be using to reach distant sites. The new research also defines the tissue as an unrecognized network in the body that provides vital cushioning to prevent damage as organs, muscles and vessels squeeze, pump, and pulse as part of daily function, scientists said Wednesday.

“I would call it an organ system. That’s the most appropriate term,” said Benias, a researcher at the Feinstein Institute, clarifying media reports earlier in the week that called tissue a distinct organ.

Even in the journal, Benias, director of endoscopic surgery for the Northwell Health network, did not define the discovery as an discrete organ. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports earlier this week, examined “the structure and distribution” of this tissue.

“Whatever people want to call it, this interstitial space is much more than what I learned in a traditional medical school education,” Benias told Newsday.

In the journal, he and his collaborators said they were advancing a paradigm-shifting idea, changing how the human body is understood.

“We propose here a revision of the anatomical concepts,” the team wrote in the journal, referring to old ideas of how the body works. They called on their colleagues throughout medicine to embrace their new findings.

“It is intentionally a little bit provocative to call it an organ system,” Benias said, underscoring that he is inviting open debate within the medical community.

As one of the body’s vast systems, Benias said the interstitium as he and his colleagues have defined it joins the list of other major systems: the circulatory, immune, lymphatic, endocrine, nervous, muscular and reproductive systems, to name a few.

He collaborated with researchers at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center and NYU School of Medicine, both in Manhattan, as well as with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania.

“This finding has potential to drive dramatic advances in medicine, including the possibility that the direct sampling of interstitial fluid may become a powerful diagnostic tool,” Dr. Neil Theise, a professor of pathology at NYU Langone Health, said in a statement.

Theise, co-lead investigator with Benias, added that the research was based on newer technology called probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy, which allows the body to be viewed with previously unparalleled detail.

The technique combines a probe with a camera attachment — an endoscope — that is inserted into the throat to view organs using a laser that lights up tissues. Sensors analyze reflected patterns offering a microscopic view of living tissues. Traditionally, small samples of biopsied tissue are studied in a pathology lab, which have not allowed doctors to view the intricacies of how the tissue functions in a person, Theise said.

Team members studied 13 patients who were being evaluated for biliary tree surgery, operations on the junction where the liver, gall bladder and bile ducts meet.

Benias is calling the discovery “extremely exciting” because it helps better illuminate other physiological processes that are fraught with unknowns, such as inflammation that leads to chronic diseases and scarring of connective tissue.

“This discovery will open up new research pathways,” he said.