Stem cell therapy for bronchopulmonary dysplasia: bench to bedside translation

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), a chronic lung disease affecting very premature infants, is a major cause of mortality and long-term morbidities despite of current progress in neonatal intensive care medicine. Though there has not been any effective treatment or preventive strategy for BPD, recent stem cell research seems to support the assumption that stem cell therapy could be a promising and novel therapeutic modality for attenuating BPD severity. This review summarizes the recent advances in stem cell research for treating BPD. In particular, we focused on the preclinical data about stem cell transplantation to improve the lung injury using animal models of neonatal BPD. These translational research provided the data related with the safety issue, optimal type of stem cells, optimal timing, route, and dose of cell transplantation, and potency marker of cells as a therapeutic agent. Those are essential subjects for the approval and clinical translation. In addition, the successful phase I clinical trial results of stem cell therapies for BPD are also discussed.