Aligning Dosimetry and Biomarkers of Lung Injury with Prophylaxis and Mitigation of Damage from Radionuclides and Metals
Abstract
Overall Project PRMRP recognizes the importance of lung health by identifying Pulmonary Fibrosis and Respiratory Health as two topic areas for FY20. Our project responds to this call and also touches on topic areas of Metals Toxicology and Sustained Release Drug Delivery by looking at these themes from a lung centered perspective. Lung health is of vital importance for survival and full function, but this organ is very sensitive to harmful particulates such as those carrying radioactive substances or toxic metals. It the line of duty, field deployed military Service personnel, Warfighters and first responders may easily be put at risk of these harmful lung exposures. Our project maps out a synergistic approach to identify such harm, determine its possible extant, predict effects on lung health, and propose possible prevention or mitigation treatments. Work will be done in several complementary areas: production of robust and adjustable field deployable detectors and software for evaluation of radioactive contamination; alignment of a finely gradated scale of lung radionuclide exposures with possible lung health effects enabled by an extensive archive of experimental animal lung material; and experimental animal studies of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved chemical that decreases entry and removes radionuclides and heavy metals from lungs. We will intertwine four project Thrust Areas and two Technical Cores from six different institutions in order to meet these plans. The overall goal of this work is to provide tools for decision-making for scenarios when Warfighters and other military personnel might be deployed into a known contamination area or another type of situation where such exposures are likely. The long-term goal is to develop chemicals that can be used for prevention and mitigation of lung injury in any exposed individual – active military in the line of duty, civilians who found themselves in harm’s way, or even Veterans suffering from long-term consequences of such exposures in the distant past. Administrative Core The Administrative Core will coordinate work of the research teams involved in four project thrust areas and two technical cores. The primary purpose of this core will be to enhance overall integration and provide infrastructure for effective collaboration. Lead institution for this project is Northwestern University (NU) which has significant experience of supporting collaborative efforts of large teams. Infrastructure that enables collaborative projects was developed with the expressed purpose to support multi-institutional projects, and the Administrative Core will take advantage of it as an added value for this project. For example, the NU legal department will help define contracts between the institutions and ensure that the legal aspects of intellectual property (IP) exchange can be handled correctly. In turn, this will free the Administrative Core to directly support scientific aspects of the proposed collaboration such as data exchange by weekly Zoom meetings and periodic face-to-face meetings of the team, and dissemination of each project’s results. These meetings will provide opportunities for evaluation of the progress of the existing four projects and two technical cores. This core will manage annual meetings with the External Advisory Board (members to be named) that will include the PRMRP Science Officer assigned to a resulting award. The Administrative Core will also organize more frequent meetings of the Steering Committee consisting of all project and core PIs to make decisions about IP and authorship on papers, training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and even the interactions with the broad scientific community. Coordination of the use of the technical cores will also take place through the Administrative Core; data deposition, management of large datasets, etc. will be overseen by the Administrative Core but managed through the Biostatistics a
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 05, 2021
- Source ID
- W81XWH2110984
Entities
People
- Gayle Woloschak
Organizations
- Northwestern University
- United States Army