- RESEARCH BRIEFINGS
Alveolar type 2 (AT2) cells are the stem cells of the lung’s air sacs and are responsible for maintaining alveolar structure and gas exchange. A study that tracked AT2 cells shows that, after injury to the airway, they can also migrate between lung compartments and become bronchiolar cells to help repair damaged airways.
This is a summary of: Liu, K. et al. Alveolar stem cells transdifferentiate to drive bronchiolar regeneration. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11127-w (2026).
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03085-0
‘Expert opinion’ is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence; Figure 1 is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.
References
Kim, C. F. B. et al. Cell 121, 823–835 (2005).
Liu, Q. et al. Nature Genet. 51, 728–738 (2019).
Kathiriya, J. J., Brumwell, A. N., Jackson, J. R., Tang, X. & Chapman, H. A. Cell Stem Cell 26, 346–358 (2020).
Liu, K. et al. Cell 187, 2428–2445 (2024).
Barkauskas, C. E. et al. J. Clin. Invest. 123, 3025–3036 (2013).
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