Leveraging factors that control alveolar epithelial cell fate enables large-scale expansion for lung tissue engineering

Alveolar type 2 cells (AT2s) are critical to lung regeneration, and the absence of large-scale methods to expand AT2s has hindered regenerative medicine efforts. We report a microcarrier-based, large-scale expansion method that was used to generate hundreds of billions of human AT2s. Through our process, expanded AT2s largely retained their phenotype. Furthermore, we showed that culture medium, substrate composition, and stiffness are all critical to the maintenance of AT2s. Finally, we showed that expanded AT2s can differentiate into alveolar type 1-like cells, both in vitro and in a decellularized porcine lung, demonstrating the utility of these cells for lung tissue engineering.