Study of late foetal lung development

End-stage lung disease accounts for the third highest cause of mortality worldwide and lung transplantation is an option for selected patients with a 5-year survival rate of only 54%. Characterising all of the different epithelial and stromal cell populations in normal, healthy lungs during human lung development is an essential part of regenerative medicine and a pre-prequisite for lung regeneration and repair. However, despite recent advances human embryonic and foetal lungs are surprisingly under-characterised, and much cellular and molecular characterisation remains to be done. Recently, there has been progress in characterising lung development until 20 weeks post-conception, but the period of human lung development after 20 weeks is virtually unexplored from a molecular perspective. This work will be crucial to improve outcome associated with prematurity as the main problem is the immature state of the developing lung.