Chronic lung disease, lung regeneration and future therapeutic strategies

Abstract

Chronic lung diseases have been recognized as one of the world's leading causes of death in recent decades. Lacking effective treatments brings the patients not only bad quality of life but also higher risk for lung cancer development. By increasing the understanding of deeper mechanism of how lung develops and regenerates, researchers now focus on studying lung regenerative medicine, aiming to apply different and more efficient therapies to treat chronic lung diseases. This review will provide a wide picture of both basic lung developmental, regeneration mechanism and different designed strategies for treating chronic lung diseases in the future decades.

Keywords: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Lung developmental mechanism; Regeneration medicines.

Fig. 1

E9.0- E13.5 mice embryonic specification of lung progenitors. Scheme for mice embryonic specification of lung progenitors, from E9.0- E13.5, a continuous process of different pioneer transcription factors that differentially expressed, leading to the formation of adult lungs. E9.0: embryonic day 9; Nkx2.1: NK2 homeobox 1; Id2: inhibitor of differentiation 2; E13.5: embryonic day 13.5; AT1/AT2 cell: alveolar type 1 and alveolar type 2 cell; Sox2,9: sex determining region Y-Box 2,9; E9.5: embryonic day 9.5; Trp63: tumor protein P63; Krt: keratin; Pdpn: podoplanin; Scgb1a1: secretoglobin family 1A member 1; Cyp2f2: cytochrome P450 family 2 subfamily F member 2.

Fig. 2

Strategies designed for treating chronic lung diseases in future, though all three are still in early developing stages.