Written by Ajanthy Arulpragasam Monday, 21 June 2010 10:02
A UNIVERSITY of WA researcher has shown that stem cell therapy could offer hope in the treatment of lung disease, injury and scarring.
Associate Professor Yuben Moodley from the Lung Institute of WA and a team of researchers have shown that stem cellsisolated from human placenta could potentially repair lung diseases including ventilator-induced lung injuries, emphysema, asbestosis and severe asthma.
“The therapies we have for lung diseases at the moment reduce inflammation but they don’t really halt the progression of the disease,” says Associate Professor Moodley.
“What we were hoping to do was try to replace the damaged cells with the healthy cells and by doing so we were trying to preserve lung function and lung structure.”
By initially inducing inflammation and fibrosis in a mouse-model, Assoc. Prof Moodley showed that injection of human amnion epithelial stem cell from placenta could repair lung inflammation and scarring in the injured mice.
In addition, these stem cells showed properties of differentiation into lung cells.
According to Assoc. Prof Moodley, placental stem cells may have a greater ability to differentiate into lung tissue compared to other stem cells such as bone marrow stem cells.
“Placental stem cells are easier to harness but we still have to work out exactly how safe they would be injected into human subjects.
“There may be a strong possibility that the cells may have a good safety profile but we need to determine that better.”
Assoc. Prof Moodley says the research now requires replication of results in other animal models and safety testing in human subjects.
“Once those two steps are covered then we can seriously think about using this therapy for lung disease but I do think the complexity of lung diseases should not be underestimated.
“If you want to treat certain lung disease you have to be able to understand why it’s abnormal and what the reasons are for the severity of the disease and by understanding the disease better we can then treat the disease more accurately.”
This research, which was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, was a collaborative effort between Assoc. Prof Moodley and researchers from the Monash Institute of Medical Research headed by Dr Ursula Manuelpillai.
The findings were recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
