Researchers from Australia’s Monash University have developed a new stem cell therapy that can be used to treat chronic asthma.  The scientists were part of the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI), which performs a lot stem cell research.

The researchers used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provided by Cynata Therapeutics.  iPSCs can be created from a patient’s own cells, then transformed into a variety of other cell types.  In this case, they were differentiated into mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) — another type of stem cell that has the ability to regenerate damaged lung tissue.

The researchers tested the efficacy of the MSCs to determine how they help each component of asthma — inflammation of the lungs, damage to airway tissue (which has been damaged by prolonged inflammation), and airway hyper responsiveness. 

They found that the stem cell therapy was very effective at reducing inflammation and that it began regenerating tissue in the airway.  They also found the stem cell therapy to be effective at normalising lung fibrosis and airway responsiveness.

The researchers concluded that MSCs were ideal for treating chronic asthma.  They believe a MSC stem cell therapy may be particularly useful for patients who do not respond to corticosteroid therapy.

Associate Professor Chrishan Samuel, from the Monash BDI’s Fibrosis Laboratory says of the findings: “Most importantly, what we found was you can treat fibrosis (hardening or scarring of the lung) very effectively,” he continued, “When we’ve tested other types of stem cells they haven’t been able to fully reverse scarring and lung dysfunction associated with asthma – we’ve had to combine them with anti-scarring drugs to achieve that. These cells were remarkable on their own as they were able to effectively reverse the scarring that contributes to lung dysfunction and difficulty in breathing,”

The findings could lead to stem cell therapies that help millions of asthma sufferers around the world.

Source: Treating Asthma with Stem Cells

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