Chinese team tests lung treatment that may be first to reverse damage from chronic disease affecting 700 million people

Name: Cancer cure? Hong Kong develops ‘world’s first’ treatment to reverse stage-four liver cancer
Uploaded: 2024-02-15T07:15:34.000Z
Duration: 9 min 24 s
Description: Cancer cure? Hong Kong develops ‘world’s first’ treatment to reverse stage-four liver cancer

Paper follows statement by Zuo Wei that ‘stem cell and progenitor cell-based regenerative medicine may be the biggest, if not the only, hope to cure COPD’

During a six-minute walking test, the study group could walk around 30 metres further after treatment, deemed a ‘clinically meaningful improvement’

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In a Chinese study, 17 patients with varying stages of COPD who received the team’s therapy had no serious adverse side effects and the team did not observe signs of tumour formation in the patients six months after transplant. Photo: Shutterstock

Victoria Bela

Published: 3:15pm, 15 Feb 2024Updated: 3:16pm, 15 Feb 2024

Chinese scientists are conducting trials on a new treatment that could become the first therapy in the world to reverse and repair the damage caused by a severe lung disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is primarily caused by smoking and household pollution, obstructs airflow and causes breathing problems in about 700 million people globally.

It is the third leading cause of death in the world, however there is no treatment to repair lung cells damaged by the condition, as current therapies only address symptoms.

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Cancer cure? Hong Kong develops ‘world’s first’ treatment to reverse stage-four liver cancer

“As a result, patients with COPD usually show persistent declines” in their ability to diffuse gases such as carbon monoxide in the lungs, the team wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday.

But through preclinical studies in mice and monkeys, the team and other scientists have found that resident progenitor lung cells – capable of differentiating into multiple types of lung cells – had a “capacity for regeneration”.