Advancing the generation of in-vivo chimeric lungs in mice using rat-derived stem cells

Creating a functional lung using interspecies chimeric animals is an attractive albeit challenging option for lung transplantation, requiring more research on the viable conditions needed for organ generation. A new study uses reverse-blastocyst complementation and tetraploid-based organ complementation methods to first determine these conditions in lung-deficient mice and then to generate rat-derived lungs in these mice. It provides useful insights on the intrinsic species-specific barriers and factors associated with lung development in interspecies chimeric animals.