A group of researchers has shown that it is possible repair damaged lung tissue in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) using patients’ own lung cells in a new attempt to ‘mend’ the damage that tobacco has left in its wake.
At the annual meeting of the European Respiratory Society in Milan, Wei Zuo’s team from the Faculty of Medicine of Tongji University (Shanghai) told how this cell therapy has worked in a group of 17 patients who participated in a clinical trial. phase I. The results obtained have been reflected in the activities that they have been able to carry out months after the experimental treatment: They breathed better, walked more and had a better quality of life afterwards.
COPD kills approximately three million people worldwide each year, 18,000 in Spain. It is a severe respiratory disease that consists of progressive damage to lung tissue. The affected tissue cannot be repaired with current treatments, only relieved with medications that widen the airways to improve airflow, known as bronchodilators.
80% of patients with COPD have been smokers and one in four smokers has the disease. More of two million Spaniards have COPD, but 1.5 do not have a diagnosis, as explained by the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (Separ). The treatment so far involves, first, the total cessation of tobacco and, then, a battery of pharmacological options to relieve symptoms, Like the bronchodilators or antibiotics in case of infectionand in the most serious cases the lung transplant.
That’s why discover new tools against COPD is essential. Chinese scientists have been working for this purpose with stem cells, which are capable of differentiating into any cell in the body, and progenitor cells, which are descendants of stem cells and can only differentiate into cells that belong to the same tissue or organ and They are normally used by the body to repair and replace damaged tissue. However, to date, results have been contradictory, especially in the case of stem cells.