Volume 30, No 8, Aug 2020

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 30 Issue 8, August 2020: 708-710   |  Open Access

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Pulmonary alveolar regeneration in adult COVID-19 patients

Jingyu Chen^1,* , Huijuan Wu^2,3 , Yuanyuan Yu^2,3 , Nan Tang^3,4,*

¹Wuxi Lung Transplantation Center, Wuxi People’s Hospital affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214023, China
²School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
³National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing 102206, China
⁴Tsinghua Institute of Multidisciplinary Biomedical Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Correspondence: Jingyu Chen(chenjy@wuxiph.com)Nan Tang(tangnan@nibs.ac.cn)

Dear Editor,

Alveolar regeneration after an acute lung injury has been observed in many mammals. Results in animal models have shown that alveolar type II (AT2) cells function as resident alveolar stem cells that can proliferate and differentiate into alveolar type I (AT1) cells to build new alveoli after lung injury.1 However, alveolar regeneration after acute lung injury in adult humans is still poorly characterized, mainly due to the lack of lung samples and regeneration-specific molecular markers. In patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can directly attack alveolar epithelial cells and cause massive AT2 cell death. It is unknown whether alveolar regeneration occurs upon SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced lung injury. This knowledge will substantially improve our basic understanding of the COVID-19 disease and our ability to prognosticate patient outcomes.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-020-0369-7

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