Modeling Lung Regeneration and Injury Responses Using Organoids and Engineered Niches

Dear Colleagues,

The lung interfaces with the external environment at every breath, necessitating robust and tightly regulated regenerative programs to repair the tissue in response to environmental insults and pathogens across lifespan. In early life, severe injury and failed regeneration can permanently reshape lung architecture and physiology, with consequences for cell function, respiratory capacity, and disease vulnerability that persist throughout life. In adulthood, maladaptive repair programs can lead to fibrosis, while overactive repair programs can distort epithelial and stromal cell composition, driving declines in airflow and gas-exchange function. A comprehensive understanding of how injury engages regenerative pathways and why these programs succeed in some settings yet fail or become maladaptive in others remains a central challenge in lung biology, particularly in humans, where only static snapshots of these processes are available.

Organoid systems and engineered niches now provide powerful experimental platforms to model these processes in real time, allowing perturbation of specific cues and the dissection of epithelial, stromal, immune, extracellular and mechanical contributions to regeneration. In this Special Issue, we aim to showcase innovative work that leverages these platforms to interrogate injury responses and regeneration in the lung across diverse injury contexts. We welcome contributions that employ organoid and engineered niche systems to advance our understanding of how lung cells respond and recovers from injury. Submissions may also encompass technological innovations, mechanistic studies of intracellular, cell to cell and environment to cell interactions and efforts that translate organoid platforms toward therapeutic discovery.

Dr. Tristan Frum
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cells is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.