Grant: Project Grant

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects 1 in 10 Canadians over the age of 40 years. It is the number ONE cause of hospital admissions in Canada. There are NO curative therapies for COPD. One major reason for the continued rise in the burden of COPD in Canada and failure of scientists and researchers to discover new treatments for this disease is that we don't have a good understanding of how Canadians develop this disease. New research is showing that COPD may not be one disease after all. It may consist of hundreds, if not thousands of different conditions. Thus, the solution to this dilemma is to consider and treat every patient with COPD as an individual rather than as one large group of homogenous patients. In this research program, which we call TORCH, we are going to find a way to evaluate patients as an individual (and not as a group) by using modern-day technologies. These technologies include CT (computed tomography) scans and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), which have been specially designed to study the lungs of COPD patients. The use of these technologies will allow us to accurately determine for each patient the lung regions that have been affected by COPD and lung regions that have been spared and thus look normal. We will use these CT and MRI datasets to map out zones of disease activity ("hot", "warm", "lukewarm", "cold", etc.) and take samples from each of these zones using a technique called bronchoscopy. Samples taken from each of these zones will be processed and subjected to leading-edge genomics technology. This will allow us to figure out the difference in the molecular profiles between these zones of disease activity within in a given individual. This investigation will ultimately lead to new insights on what is causing the disease within a given individual and between individuals and discovery of potential new drugs and biomarkers for COPD patients.