Scientists first identified lung stem cells
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Researchers from the Boston hospital Brigham and Women's (USA) for the first time in history isolated human lung stem cells, capable of self-renewal, as well as the formation and integration of a number of biological structures, including bronchioles, alveoli and pulmonary vessels.
Cells were detected in surgical samples of lung tissue, isolated and tested both in vitro and in vivo. Stem cells were injected into mice with damaged light six doses of 20,000 cells each. They not only formed new fabrics, but also integrated into existing ones within 10-14 days.
Researchers define cells as genuinely stem cells, because they satisfy three conditions: first, the cell is renewed; secondly, it turns into many different types of lung cells; thirdly, it is transmitted. The latter means that when mice injected stem cells and the body responded by generating new tissues, the researchers were able to isolate the stem cells of such mice and use them in other mice with the same results.
What exactly do stem cells, while in the lungs, remains unknown. "They are smarter than us!" That's all for now, what the shocked co-author of Piero Anvers's research can say. Scientists are only available one way to work with stem cells of the lungs - isolating them from the body, multiplying and injecting. Then they act themselves.
Experts believe that in the immediate future, stem cells will be useful for the treatment of emphysema and pulmonary hypertension, as well as recovery of the lungs after an oncologic operation. As for asthma, scientists can not say anything yet.
Colleagues with caution comment on this news: they want to see the stem cells of the lungs with their own eyes. "It's hard for me to imagine that they are capable of forming the whole variety of lung tissue, in which there are more than forty types of cells," says Brigitte Gompertz of the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, for example.
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