Fig. 1: Analysis of airway basal progenitors in monkey and human.

a Representative images of consecutive CT scans showing the presence of local lesions (red arrow) before a 71 days post first bleomycin injured in the macaque. b Masson’s trichrome staining for collagen deposition (blue) on histological section of macaque monkey lung 71 days post bleomycin injury. Scale bar, 80 μm. c Immunofluorescence images of KRT5⁺ pods in monkey lung injured by bleomycin with anti-KRT5 (red) staining and DNA counterstain (DAPI, blue). Scale bar, 100 mm. d Quantification of macaque KRT5⁺ cells numbers in the alveolar area of control or injured macaque monkey lung (n = 6 technical replicates). Data are presented as mean ± SEM. Statistical analysis was performed using a two-tailed t test (***P < 0.001). e Colony forming numbers of macaque KRT5⁺ P63⁺ cells derived from control or injured macaque monkey lung by in vitro culture (n = 3 biological replicates). Data are presented as mean ± SEM. Statistical analysis was performed using a two-tailed t test (****P < 0.0001). f Representative lung CT images of sampling and damaged area of the IPF patients. Green circle: sampling area; red circle: damaged area. g Left, Brightfield image of human airway basal progenitor cells clones. Right, immunostaining of airway basal progenitor cell clones with anti-KRT5 (green), anti-P63 (red) and DNA counterstain (DAPI, blue). Scale bar, 100 μm. h The automated progenitor cell culture system. Left, an overview of the system; Right, a 6-axis robotic arm mimicking the human arm movements. i Representative images of human airway basal progenitor cells cultured by junior workers or by automated cell culture system. Scale bar,100 μm. j Unsupervised principal component analysis (PCA) of whole genome transcriptome of airway basal progenitor cells derived from healthy donors or patients. Each dot represented the cell clone derived from an individual donor. The dotted line indicated the clones which were transcriptomically similar to healthy donors. k Correlation analysis of gene expression level with pulmonary function of patients. The shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval around the regression line, reflecting the standard error of the fitted values.