The next 10 years in lung stem cell research
The preceding chapters have documented many of the exciting advances over the past decade in the burgeoning field of lung stem cell biology. We have seen how stem cells contribute to the construction and maintenance of the architecture and cellular composition of the lung, and to its repair after injury and infection. Conversely, defects in stem cells are associated with lung diseases such as fibrosis, COPD and cancer. The ability to grow fetal and adult lung stem cells in 3D culture, and to direct their differentiation from pluripotential cells, has provided new models for studying human lung development, and for screening drugs to promote repair and modify disease. In particular, single cell transcriptomic and genomic technologies have opened many new ways of exploring the human lung, including the computational modelling of cell lineage relationships and interactions during development and disease progression [1]. Nevertheless, numerous challenges remain (figure 1), four of which we will discuss in more detail.
