REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Inflammation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1683872
This article is part of the Research TopicMacrophages: Allies or merciless enemies in musculoskeletal systemsView all 5 articles
Macrophages and osteoclasts: similarity and divergence between bone phagocytes
Provisionally accepted
- UMR7370 Laboratoire de Physio Médecine Moléculaire (LP2M), Nice, France
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Both macrophages and osteoclasts are vital immune components of the bone microenvironment. While macrophages play an essential role in phagocytosis, pathogen clearance and tissue remodeling, osteoclasts are well described for their bone resorption capacity. However, osteoclasts are much more than bone resorbing cells. While macrophages have been intensively studied as immune cells, the immune function of osteoclasts has long been neglected until recent evidence demonstrated that they play an important role in modulating immune responses. Both macrophages and osteoclasts exhibit the phenotypic and functional characteristic plasticity of the myeloid lineage, which depends on their origin and environment. Besides their common progenitors, osteoclasts and macrophages share several joint mechanisms ranging from cell fusion and phagocytosis to immune function and tissue remodeling. In this review, we discuss and illustrate the functional and characteristic parallels between macrophages and osteoclasts.
Keywords: Macrophages, Osteoclasts, bone phagocytes, Bone formation, remodeling, bone pathologies, bone healing, fusion capacity
Received: 11 Aug 2025; Accepted: 24 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Blin-Wakkach, Halper, Dolfi, Ivanov and Madel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Claudine Blin-Wakkach, claudine.blin@univ-cotedazur.fr
Maria-Bernadette Madel, maria-bernadette.madel@outlook.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.