Lung Injury; Relates to Real-Time Endoscopic Monitoring of Single Cells Respiratory Health in Lung
Abstract
Overall Military Impact: Military personnel can be exposed by inhalation to dusts and toxicants in the field that may contribute to lung disease. We will build and tune a new fiber-optic system that can be deployed alone or as a modification to an existing upper or lower airway scope instrument that will detect airway lining cell injury with a greater specificity, sensitivity, and speed than can be done with existing medical technologies, which can only visualize, but not precisely measure the metabolic health of individual airway lining cells. We envisage that this system will enable rapid and accurate assessment of lung epithelial health by medical branch personnel in the field. The available technologies to detect early-stage alterations of lung function in patients require a long processing time and lack satisfactory sensitivity and resolution. In this proposal, we will create, test, and tune a new approach that detects changes in the intrinsic metabolism of individual cells lining the airways as an accurate, rapid, and portable means to assess the health status of the lungs in the field. The airways of the lung are lined with three major cell types: (1) Basal cells are the smallest epithelial cells and are located at the base of the tracheal epithelium. Basal cells have the ability to regenerate the entire airway epithelium after injury because of their intrinsic capacity to regenerate other kinds of airway lining cells. (2) Club cells secrete a protective mixture of proteins that suppress inflammation of the airway and fight against bacterial/viral infection. (3) Ciliated cells have little hair-like projections on their surface called cilia that beat and waft mucus and small pollutants up the airway to the mouth, where they are normally coughed out or swallowed. The current approach to analyze airway lining cells requires invasive tissue biopsies and time-consuming laboratory analysis. Furthermore, the quality of specimens is sometimes not optimal, and multiple biopsies need to be taken. These techniques are thus not very useful in the field setting. Our novel technology is the first that can easily identify the lung basal, Club, or ciliated cells by analyzing their individual metabolic profiles in real time. Our preliminary data on animal airways have shown that our new technology, which is based on noninvasive measurement of the cellular metabolism in individual cells, can analyze the health of single cells in the airway epithelium and clearly identify them (basal vs. Clara. vs. ciliated). By rapidly and accurately assessing the metabolic profile of airway cells we can gain fast and precise information about the health status of the airway epithelium in healthy versus early disease states of the lung. Our goal is to be able to determine not only the severity of any damage to the epithelium but, more importantly, which specific cells in the epithelium have been injured. The system we are building will be compact and can be carried by military medical personnel to deliver quick and accurate diagnostic information in areas distant from hospitals as first responders. Because of these design criteria, we specifically suggest it could be extremely useful in military deployment, warfare, or disaster territories to assess the lung health lungs of Soldiers and civilians.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 31, 2017
- Source ID
- W81XWH1610253
Entities
People
- David Warburton
Organizations
- United States Army