Follow-Up Study of Safety and Efficacy of Pneumostem® in Premature Infants With Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia

This is a long term follow-up study of the open label, single-center, phase I clinical trial to evaluate the safety of Pneumostem® in premature infants with BPD.

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is the most common cause of death for premature newborns with low birth weights. In addition, many children who recover from the disease suffer from various complications such as prolonged hospitalization, pulmonary hypertension, and failure to thrive. It has been reported that bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSC) can differentiate into pulmonary epithelial and pulmonary endothelial cells. Some animal studies showed that BM-MSCs differentiate into bronchial cells and type 2 pneumocytes in rats with pneumonia and improve the fibrosis that occur after administration of bleomycin. Based on the findings, it is considered that mesenchymal stem cell therapy can help regenerate the damaged lung as well as BPD that cause lung inflammation, fibrosis, deficiency of type 2 pneumocytes, and so on. PNEUMOSTEM® consists of human umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells and is intended to treat BPD in premature infants. This is a long term follow-up study of the earlier part of the phase I clinical trial.