TY - JOUR TI - Type 2 Alveolar Epithelial Cells Differentiated from Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells Alleviate Mouse Pulmonary Fibrosis through β-Catenin-Regulated Cell Apoptosis AU - Liu, Jiang AU - Peng, Danyi AU - You, Jingyi AU - Zhou, Ou AU - Qiu, Huijun AU - Hao, Chang AU - Chen, Hong AU - Fu, Zhou AU - Zou, Lin T2 - Stem Cells and Development AB - Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a chronic, progressive, and lethal disease with little response to available therapies. One of the major mechanisms of PF is the repeated injury and inadequate regeneration of the alveolar epithelium. In this study, we induced human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) to differentiate into type 2 alveolar epithelial cells (AEC2s), and provided evidence that intratracheal transplantation of hUC-MSC-derived AEC2s (MSC-AEC2s) could improve mortality and alleviate fibrosis in bleomycin-induced PF mice. Transplantation of MSC-AEC2s could increase the AEC2 cell count in these mice, and the results of cell tracing experiment exhibited that the increased AEC2s originated from the self-renewal of mouse alveolar epithelium. The AEC2 survival was controlled by the apoptosis of AEC2s via the expression of β-catenin in PF mice. In vitro experiments, MSC-AEC2s could alleviate apoptosis of MLE-12 cells induced by TGF-β1, which could be eliminated by using PRI-724, a β-catenin inhibitor, suggesting β-catenin signaling involved in the protection against apoptosis provided by MSC-AEC2s. Our study demonstrated that MSC-AEC2s could protect PF mice through regulating apoptosis mediated by β-catenin, which provided a viable strategy for the treatment of PF. DA - 2021/04/24/ PY - 2021 DO - 10.1089/scd.2020.0208 DP - liebertpub.com (Atypon) SN - 1547-3287 UR - https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/scd.2020.0208 Y2 - 2021/04/29/16:42:41 ER -