Study of late foetal lung development

终末期肺病是全球第三大死亡原因，肺移植是选定患者的一种选择，5年生存率仅为54%。在人类肺发育过程中，表征正常健康肺中所有不同的上皮细胞和基质细胞群是再生医学的重要组成部分，也是肺再生和修复的先决条件。然而，尽管最近取得了进展，但令人惊讶的是，人类胚胎和胎儿肺的特征不足，许多细胞和分子特征仍有待完成。最近，在表征受孕后20周的肺发育方面取得了进展，但从分子角度来看，20周后人类肺发育的时期几乎未被探索。这项工作对于改善与早产相关的结果至关重要，因为主要问题是发育中的肺的不成熟状态。

End-stage lung disease accounts for the third highest cause of mortality worldwide and lung transplantation is an option for selected patients with a 5-year survival rate of only 54%. Characterising all of the different epithelial and stromal cell populations in normal, healthy lungs during human lung development is an essential part of regenerative medicine and a pre-prequisite for lung regeneration and repair. However, despite recent advances human embryonic and foetal lungs are surprisingly under-characterised, and much cellular and molecular characterisation remains to be done. Recently, there has been progress in characterising lung development until 20 weeks post-conception, but the period of human lung development after 20 weeks is virtually unexplored from a molecular perspective. This work will be crucial to improve outcome associated with prematurity as the main problem is the immature state of the developing lung.