Jianwen Que - July 1, 2020

Jianwen Que, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, CUIMC, "Distinct stem/progenitor cells proliferate to heal COVID-19 lungs"

It was identified that the SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 is expressed in the ciliated and Type 2 (AT2) alveolar cells. Fang et al. (2020) showed that COVID-19 patients have severely damaged trachea and lung. Dr. Que is interested to understand how the stem cells in the lung respond to the damage. They observed that while normal cells in the normal human airways rarely proliferate, there are extensive proliferating basal cells in the trachea of COVID-19 patients and the majority of proliferating cells in the intrapulmonary airways are basal cells. The majority of these proliferating cells are lineage negative and they don’t express any differentiation markers. Furthermore, neuroendocrine and mucous cells don’t proliferate in the intrapulmonary airways of COVID-19 lungs. The questions that need to be further addressed include the molecular identity of lineage negative cells and the cell types that contribute to them.