Shedding of Alveolar Heparan Sulfate Mediates Epithelial Dysfunction in Experimental and Human ARDS
Abstract
Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program Topic Area: Acute Lung Injury For over 150 years, military doctors have faced a challenging problem. Young, healthy Soldiers who had suffered a battlefield injury would suddenly develop severe difficulty breathing, as their lungs unexpectedly filled with fluid. Today, this disease is known as the “Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome” (ARDS) and is a major problem in both civilian and military intensive care units. Despite being studied for decades, no effective treatment has been found for ARDS. We now believe that this failure is because we have been attempting to treat all patients with ARDS the same way. In fact, ARDS is not a single disease, but is the end result of a number of different processes of lung injury, each of which requires a specific therapy. To effectively help an injured Service member with ARDS, we would need to be able to identify what is the cause of ARDS in that individual, and then apply a therapy aimed at stopping that specific cause of lung injury. For such customization (also known as “personalization”) of care to be possible, doctors need to be able to rapidly identify what is the cause of ARDS in an individual patient. Furthermore, doctors need to have specific treatments that effectively prevent the cause of ARDS identified in that patient. In this proposal, our team of doctors and researchers seeks to determine the importance of a sugar (called “heparan sulfate”) that lines the airspaces within a lung. This sugar, which is necessary for the lung to work properly, is disrupted in certain causes of ARDS. Excitingly, we have discovered a method that may rapidly and inexpensively detect heparan sulfate disruption in patients, potentially identifying people who would maximally benefit from treatments aimed at protecting lung heparan sulfate. This work, by allowing for the “personalization” of care in ARDS, has great potential to benefit both military and civilian patients with this critical illness.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 29, 2018
- Source ID
- W81XWH1810683
Entities
People
- Julie A. Bastarache
Organizations
- United States Army
- Vanderbilt University