The first step to better addressing lung injury and repair is to understand how the lung develops, says Jennifer Sucre, MD, a neonatologist at Vanderbilt who researches lung injury in neonates.

"If we know how the lung forms, then that's a playbook for how to reform it and regenerate it after injury," she said. "Those processes of development and regeneration are linked."

Sucre is conducting a deep dive into the lung cell landscape, including using single-cell RNA sequencing.