CYSTIC FIBROSIS: Stem cells shown to regenerate damaged lung tissue for first time
Health & Medicine Week, September 15, 2003
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that adult human stem cell
transplantation results in spontaneous cell regeneration in damaged lung tissue.
Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine,
the study further supports an existing body of research that suggests blood- and
marrow-derived stem cells have the capacity to become many different human
tissues.
"Many of the body's tissues once thought to be only locally regenerative may,
in fact, be actively replaced by circulating stem cells after hematopoietic or
blood-forming stem cell transplantation," said lead author Benjamin Suratt, MD,
assistant professor of medicine and Vermont Lung Center researcher at the
University of Vermont College of Medicine. "This finding is of note not only for
its novelty as a regenerative mechanism of the lung, but also for its vast
therapeutic implications for any number of lung diseases."
According to Suratt, the study's findings indicate that circulating stem
cells are going into organ tissue and repairing damage, which could have a huge
impact on the treatment of such devastating lung diseases as emphysema or cystic
fibrosis. Supported by funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a
National Center for Research Resources Centers for Biomedical Research
Excellence grant, Suratt and his colleagues are currently looking further into
what types of cells have the capacity to differentiate and generate a different
type of cell, and whether these cells might be used to treat cystic fibrosis
(Suratt BT, Cool CD, Serls AE, et al., Human pulmonary chimerism after
hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Am J Respir Crit Care Med,
2003;168(3):318-22).
