A recent pair of studies have found success in treating lung diseases with stem cell therapy.

For the approximately 100,000 Americans diagnosed with the fatal and debilitating lung disease known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, few options are available besides just treating the symptoms. But a recent study from North Carolina State University may offer new hope for those patients and the 40,000 new patients diagnosed with IPF each year.

"Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis causes a heavy buildup of scar tissue in the lungs, rendering the lungs inflexible and unable to expand and contract," explains Dr. Naota Hashimoto, a stem cell practitioner from La Quinta, California. "Naturally, this makes it harder to breathe because the lungs cannot take in enough oxygen."

In the North Carolina State University study, researchers performed a procedure called a transbronchial biopsy to remove and then culture tens of millions of stem cells from the throats of lab rats. These cells, called lung spheroid cells, or LSCs, were then implanted via injection into rats that had a condition similar to IPF.

"What the researchers found was that the rats who were treated with stem cells exhibited less lung inflammation and even healthier lung cells than rats who did not receive the stem cell injections," said Hashimoto.

The North Carolina State University team's goal is to eventually use LSCs toward a long-term expansion of lung progenitor cells and to develop stem cell therapy for chronic lung conditions. They plan to focus future studies on more transbronchial biopsy-derived lung spheroid cells in animal models of other serious lung diseases.

While the study, which was the first of its kind, has yet to be proven on human subjects, it offers new hope for patients with the irreversible IPF and for those with other lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.