Future studies are needed to probe how FAPs are activated and differentiated in pharyngeal muscles, whether this activation involves interaction with CD206+ macrophages or HGF autocrine effects, and whether this regulation is disturbed in pharyngeal muscle-specific pathologies with excessive ECM like OPMD (Gidaro et al., 2013; Bensalah et al., 2022). The gene discussed is HGF; the disease is oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy.