Washington, Sep 22 - Based on more than 50 experiments with mice, scientists have mapped out the basic steps taken by a particular set of white blood cells in setting the pace for recovery after serious lung injury.

The white blood cells are called regulatory T-cells, or Tregs for short, and their best known function is to keep the body's immune system from attacking its own healthy tissues.

'Our study results are the critical first leads in finding treatments for a clinical condition that until now has had none, despite its high mortality,' says study senior investigator Landon King, Johns Hopkins University.

'When a patient develops acute lung injury, we want the critical care medicine team to be able to do more than just stabilize the patient on a ventilator,' said King.

King says the study opens the door to a new field in research and development of drugs that either speeds up the post-injury activation of Tregs, or supplements levels of Tregs in people who may be relatively lymphocyte deficient from either lung disease or chemotherapy.