KITLG and Myocardial fibrosis: ECs, as the main effector cells in the cardiac vascular niche, produce a variety of factors to regulate HSC function, such as EC-derived stem cell factor (SCF), and SCF can affect the proliferation and differentiation of HSCs and interfere with the progress of myocardial fibrosis (Xu et al., 2018; Poller et al., 2020).