Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital recently revealed they had discovered important uses for “exosomes.” These are microscopic particles “containing proteins and nucleic acids,” impossibly tiny stem cell “factors.”
The scientists believe that these important ingredients could protect the little lungs of premature babies from serious lung diseases. Likewise, these invisible factors could control the “chronic lung injury promoted by inflammation,” in these very young lungs. The discovery began with earlier research in transplanting a kind of stem cell called “mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs.)” The amazed researchers discovered that “the fluid in which the cells were grown was more effective than the cells themselves.”
The research team was led by Stella Kourembanas, MD, S. Alex Mitsialis, PhD, Changjin Lee, PhD, all of the Division of Newborn Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. A premature baby’s lungs often struggle to get enough oxygen, “resulting in hypoxia and the need for ventilator assistance to breathe.”
Inflammation of the respiratory system impedes proper development and is often accompanied with pulmonary hypertension. (PH) This means the baby will have dangerously high blood pressure in the pulmonary artery. The use of these little packets of stem cell factors from the MSC’s could become life-saving. Such possible treatments must receive much more research before they can become approved and available.
Research projects such as this one bear gifts that have not yet been completely unwrapped, and we have not decoded their “directions.” They are not this year’s Christmas gifts, but gifts for the future. Until then, the Florida Lung Doctors will keep track of the new developments on this and other lung research projects, as we proceed into 2013!