Human stem cells converted to functional lung cells

Human stem cells converted to functional lung cells
"Researchers have had relative success in turning human stem cells into heart cells, pancreatic beta cells, intestinal cells, liver cells, and nerve cells, raising all sorts of possibilities for regenerative medicine," said study leader Hans-Willem Snoeck, MD, PhD, professor of medicine (in microbiology & immunology) and affiliated with the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology and the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative. “Now, we are finally able to make lung and airway cells. This is important because lung transplants have a particularly poor prognosis. Although any clinical application is still many years away, we can begin thinking about making autologous lung transplants—that is, transplants that use a patient’s own skin cells to generate functional lung tissue.”

Source and further reading:
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-human-stem-cells-functional-lung.html
Reference:
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2754.html
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