Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Direct costs of asthma, which include medical/nursing care and medication, in Canada are estimated at $600 million per year, currently use 14% of Canadian health care funding, making it the second most expensive disease to treat. Unfortunately, around 200 Canadians die from asthma each year. We now understand that structural changes within the airway of asthmatic patients, termed airway remodeling, are currently unresponsive to existing asthma medications. The healthy lung is able to inflate and deflate as we breathe due to a net of collagen and elastic fibres. However, in asthma patients, the airways within the lung are continually injured. This constant injury results in a build-up of scarring due to non-elastic fibres, such as collagen,which reduces the normal lung capacity. Our objective is to use a new type of microscope called nonlinear optical microscopy (NLOM), for the first time on asthmatic and non-asthmatic lungs. The NLOM will help us to understand the 3-dimensional changes in the lung tissues (e.g. elastic and collagen fibres) with disease. Changes, such as fiber length, thickness, and alignment, can be quantified by examining nonlinear optical (NLO) images using mathematic models. Using these tools, our data suggests that collagen and elastic fibers are more disorganized and disrupted in asthmatic subjects. Furthermore, the cells responsible for collagen and elastin production seem to be defective in asthmatic airways. The ultimate goal of this research is to provide researchers and clinicians with important information, from which medications to repair collagen/elastin fibers to prevent scarring of the lung could be developed in the future.