Researchers create cellular blueprint of healthy lungs.

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The primary function of the lung is to facilitate transfer of oxygen to the blood stream. Crucial to this lifegiving task are endothelial cells, which line blood vessels permeating the lung and through which gas exchange occurs.

Malfunction of these cells is implicated in a range of different diseases, including COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), pulmonary fibrosis, and pulmonary hypertension. And the COVID-19 pandemic has raised important questions about these cells: Why are some endothelium cells, particularly in the elderly, more susceptible to injury from the disease?

“The assumption has been that all pulmonary endothelial cells were relatively the same,” said Naftali Kaminski, the Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary) and chief of Yale’s Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine.

In a new study, Kaminski’s team and a multinational team of investigators and the Human Cell Atlas project, an international initiative to describe all cells in the human body, examined the diverse characteristics of these relatively understudied cells.

news.yale.edu/2021/05/25/re...

Circulation. Research Paper:

ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161...