Stem Cell News

Stem Cell Research; Researchers turn cord blood into lung cells

Stem Cell Week

2006 NOV 20 - (NewsRx.com) -- Researchers at the University of Minnesota have, for the first time, coaxed umbilical cord blood stem cells to differentiate into a type of lung cell.

The cord blood stem cells differentiated into a type of lung cell called type II alveolar cells. These cells are responsible for secreting surfactant, a substance which allows the air sacs in the lungs to remain open, allowing air to move in and out of the sacs. The cells are also responsible for helping to repair the airway after injury.

"In the future, we may be able to examine cord blood from babies who have lung diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, to do more research to understand how these diseases evolve as well as to develop better medical treatments," said David McKenna, MD, assistant professor of lab medicine and pathology and medical director of the Clinical Cell Therapy Lab at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview.

Now the researchers will try to better characterize the alveolar cells, so that in the future, these alveolar cells could be used as a research tool to better understand lung development and disease. The cells may also be useful as a way to test potential new drugs.

To differentiate the lung cells from the cord blood, McKenna and his team first derived the Multi-Lineage Progenitor Cell (MLPC) from umbilical cord blood. This stem cell, which was first isolated and characterized by BioE, Inc., St. Paul, is a precursor cell that can be expanded in culture, then differentiated into different types of tissue representative of all three embryonic lineages, endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm.

In this series of experiments, McKenna and his group cultured the MLPC and differentiated it into the lung cells, an endoderm-type cell. By testing the cells that grew with various methods, they were able to find cells that exhibited key markers present in type II alveolar cells.

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