Thursday, October 27, 2011

Lung Stem Cells Offer Therapeutic Clues

Source: Harvard Medical School
Date: October 27, 2011

Summary:

Guided by insights into how mice recover after H1N1 flu, researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, together with researchers at A*STAR of Singapore, have cloned three distinct stem cells from the human airways and demonstrated that one of these cells can form into the lung's alveoli air sac tissue. What's more, the researchers showed that these same lung stem cells are rapidly deployed in a dynamic process of lung regeneration to combat damage from infection or chronic disease. The findings will be reported in the Oct. 28 issue of Cell.