Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a common disorder in intensive care units with a mortality rate approaching 40%, is a considerable challenge. In ARDS, the lungs are filled with fluid resulting in patients drowning in their own fluids. ARDS is one of the most difficult conditions to treat because of its patchy distribution, where the fluid-filled regions of the lung are interspersed within the normal lungs, causing conventional treatments to preferentially affect the normal lungs rather than the injured regions. For instance, mechanical ventilators, although life-saving, preferentially inflate the normal regions of the lung resulting in overdistension and injury of the normal lung itself. Similarly, medicines given by inhalation or injection preferentially affect the normal lungs or other organs in the body. Here we propose a revolutionary form of "personalized and targeted medicine" to treat ARDS based on ultrasound technology and microbubbles (tiny gas bubbles already used clinically for diagnostic purposes). While the normal regions of lung scatter ultrasound waves (because ultrasound is blocked by air), the ultrasound waves are able to penetrate the injured (fluid-filled or collapsed) regions, allowing enhanced delivery of drugs like antibiotics to the damaged lung. This approach is a revolutionary form of "personalized medicine", since it will allow the delivery of medicines and genes exactly where they are needed in each patient. In this project, we will develop a clinical prototype of an ultrasound therapy system specifically for the lungs and optimize treatment protocols using large animal models of ARDS. At the end of the project, we will translate the study to a Phase I clinical trial in humans.