Breathing Easy

"We found that cell transplantation not only improved the lung function of patients with with COPD [obstructive pulmonary disease], but also relieved their symptoms, such as shortness of breath, loss of exercise ability and persistent coughing."

"This means that the patients could live a better life, and usually with longer life expectancy."

"If emphysema progresses, it increases the risk of death. In this trial, we found that cell transplantation could repair mild emphysema, making the lung damage disappear."

"However, we cannot repair severe emphysema yet."

Professor Wei Zuo, Tongji University, Shanghai

Getty Images

 

For the very first time lung damage resulting from the medical condition of emphysema has been reversed with the experimental use of stem calls culled from patients' own organs. A success story that lends hope to sufferers that science might be on the cusp of an imminent breakthrough for a cure. Damage to the lungs of two patients with mild emphysema had lung damage repaired in a Chinese trial to determine whether the treatment was safe.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were able to walk for longer distances after having the stem cell transplants, resulting in an improvement in their lung function. Scientists from Tongji University in Shanghai feel immensely encouraged by the results of two conditions that are generally viewed as irreversible. They now anticipate moving on to larger trials in the hope that a treatment will be available to COPD and emphysema sufferers within the next three years.

"In our trial, 35% of the patients had severe COPD and 53% had extremely severe COPD. Usually, many patients with such severe COPD will die quite quickly if their disease progresses. We used a tiny catheter that contains a brush to collect the progenitor cells from the patients' own airways. We cloned the cells to create up to a thousand million more, and then we transplanted them back into the patients' lungs via bronchoscopy in order to repair the damaged lung tissue."

Professor Wei Zuo

The general term of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) includes people with emphysema as an umbrella term with the understanding their irreversible lung damage is often attributable to smoking, air pollution or chemicals. Both conditions at present, have symptoms that can only be alleviated with the use of drugs.

 

Scientists during the trials made use of a tiny brush to collect stem cells from the lungs of 17 patients, then cloned the cells to create up to a thousand million more of them, before transplanting the cells into the patients' lungs through a bronchoscopy; a tube inserted down the patients' throats. 24 weeks later, the lungs' reaction to the procedure was an increased capacity of one third, enabling the lungs to exchange air in the bloodstream.

 

Three million people globally, succumb prematurely to death brought on by COPD, a severe respiratory disease that involves progressive damage to lung tissue. The affected tissue cannot be repaired with currently available treatments, medicines are able only to alleviate the condition, through prescribed drugs that expand the airways to improve airflow, known as bronchodilators.

"Stem cell and progenitor cell-based regenerative medicine may be the biggest, if not the only, hope to cure COPD."

"We are going to test the treatment's efficacy in larger groups of people with more lung diseases."

"We hope to develop the treatment for clinical use within about two to three years."

Professor Wei Zuo, School of Medicine, Tongji University