Cell replenishment within the airways is governed by the random division of a population of basal progenitor cells, in a process that is accelerated in smokers.

It is safe to transplant autologous P63+ progenitor cells isolated from healthy bronchi to IPF patients for the treatment of IPF, and preliminary efficacy has been demonstrated in some patients.

Single-cell transcriptomic analysis reveals novel regenerative endothelial cell populations that mediate remarkably rapid and complete microvascular repair in a novel model of acute lung injury induced by endothelial cell ablation.

The balance between SOX2 and SOX21 is evolutionary conserved and is important for cell fate decision during lung epithelium development and repair after damage.

Directed differentiation of stem cells can generate ventral-anterior foregut spheroids that can expand into three-dimensional lung organoids with striking structural, cellular and molecular similarities to the human fetal lung.

Improved characterisation of human embryonic lung development highlights human-mouse differences and facilitates the development of defined culture conditions for the expansion of self-renewing, multipotent human lung epithelial progenitor cells.

An induced pluripotent stem-cell-based, human heart and lung co-differentiation model reveals their shared signaling requirement and enables investigation of their developmental mutual interaction and tissue boundary formation.

An integrated stem cell-based disease modeling and computational approach demonstrates how proximal airway epithelium is critical for SARS-CoV-2 infectivity and distal alveolar cells are critical for simulating the host responses.

To facilitate human developmental biology research, CRISPR-mediated homologous recombination, tightly inducible gene knockdowns (CRISPRi) and overexpression (CRISPRa) have been efficiently applied to human organoids.