CX3CL1 and fungal infectious disease: In this way, oral fibroblasts may also play a role in the innate immune response to fungal infection with the production of inflammatory markers as reported by Ohta et al., who showed that live and heat-killed C. albicans, as well as non-albicans strains, caused an increase in CX3CL1 mRNA and protein expression in human immortalized oral fibroblasts [14].