Sustained YAP/TAZ activation promotes aberrant alveolar epithelial cell differentiation and drives persistent fibrotic remodeling
Isabella P Gaona, A Scott McCall, Natalie M Geis, Arlo C Colvard, Gianluca T DiGiovanni, Taylor P Sherrill, Ujjal K Singha, David S Nichols, Ana P Serezani, Holly E David, Jean-Philippe Cartailler, Shristi Shrestha, Sergey S Gutor, Timothy S Blackwell, Jonathan A Kropski, Jason J Gokey · 2026
Read Sustained YAP/TAZ activation promotes aberrant alveolar epithelial cell differentiation and drives persistent fibrotic remodeling by Isabella P Gaona, A Scott McCall, Natalie M Geis, Arlo C Colvard, Gianluca T DiGiovanni, Taylor P Sherrill, Ujjal K Singha, David S Nichols, Ana P Serezani, Holly E David, Jean-Philippe Cartailler, Shristi Shrestha, Sergey S Gutor, Timothy S Blackwell, Jonathan A Kropski, Jason J Gokey (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13464018.txt.
Description
Gaona and co-authors examined in 2026 why lung repair fails in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the scarring disease that stiffens the lungs. They focused on two signaling proteins, YAP and TAZ. These proteins switch on repair in the air-sac lining cells. Harm may follow if they never switch off. Diseased and healthy human lungs were compared. The team also engineered mice whose lining cells keep the signal permanently active.
In fibrotic human lungs, about 39 of every 100 lining cells carried active YAP in the nucleus. Only about 6 in 100 did so in healthy lungs, and TAZ showed the same pattern. Mice with locked-on signaling healed badly after chemical lung injury. They were still scarred at 28 and 56 days. Their lining cells drifted into abnormal airway-like states. A drug that blocks the pathway, verteporfin, restored healthier cell identity. It improved repair as well, making the stuck switch a plausible treatment target.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Isabella P Gaona, A Scott McCall, Natalie M Geis, Arlo C Colvard, Gianluca T DiGiovanni, Taylor P Sherrill, Ujjal K Singha, David S Nichols, Ana P Serezani, Holly E David, Jean-Philippe Cartailler, Shristi Shrestha, Sergey S Gutor, Timothy S Blackwell, Jonathan A Kropski, Jason J Gokey |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 67 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |