Sida Shao, Nan Zhang, Gregory P Specht, Shaochen You, Lirui Song, Qiangwei Fu, David Huang, Hengyao You, Jian Shu, Alain Domissy, Shuangwei Li, Van Nguyen-Tran, Sean B Joseph, Arnab K Chatterjee, Jeffrey Jian Chen, Peter G Schultz, Michael J Bollong
Type 2 alveolar epithelial cells (AEC2s) are stem cells in the adult lung that contribute to lower airway repair. Agents that promote the selective expansion of these cells might stimulate regeneration of the compromised alveolar epithelium, an etiology-defining event in several pulmonary diseases. From a high-content imaging screen of the drug repurposing library ReFRAME, we identified that dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4) inhibitors, widely used type 2 diabetes medications, selectively expand AEC2s and are broadly efficacious in several mouse models of lung damage...
April 16, 2024: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America