Demise of lung transplants: exposing critical gaps in understanding lung stem cells

Lung transplantation is the only potentially curative therapy for end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), and cystic fibrosis (CF), which together claim the lives of 150,000 patients each year in the USA (1). Yet less than 2,000 of these procedures are performed each year in the US due to donor availability, the need of specialized surgical and medical teams, and the overall unit costs that are approaching one million dollars.