Jieru Wang

TL;DR: The cultivation of alveolar type II cells at an air-liquid interface provides primary cultures in which to study the pulmonary innate immune responses to infection with SARS-CoV, and to explore possible therapeutic approaches to modulating these innate immune responds.

TL;DR: The results suggest that IL-29 exerts IFN-β-independent protection in type II cells through direct activation of antiviral genes during IAV infection.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that influenza H1N1 and H5N1 viruses replicated productively in type II cells and type I-like cells although with different kinetics, which provides important insights into the viral tropisms and host responses of different cell types found in the lung and are relevant to an understanding of the pathogenesis of severe human influenza disease.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors isolated human alveolar type II cells and maintained them in a highly differentiated state, which supported SARS-CoV replication as evidenced by RT-PCR detection of viral subgenomic RNA and an increase in virus titer.

TL;DR: This work used a published method for type II cell isolation and developed primary culture systems for maintenance of differentiated adult human alveolar epithelial cells for in vitro studies to study the expression of the phenotypes.