Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) is a respiratory illness and one of the leading causes of death worldwide. It is heavily correlated with smoking and other inhaled irritants. Patients who suffer from COPD experience a variety of symptoms including breathlessness, increased mucus production, chronic airway inflammation and emphysema. There is no cure for COPD, and current treatments focus on controlling symptoms and improving patients' quality of life. One such treatment is the use of long-acting beta agonists (LABA), a type of bronchodilator. LABAs can be taken once or twice daily and function by relaxing the airway smooth muscle in order to increase airflow to the lungs. These medications may also decrease inflammation by lowering mucus production and neutrophil (a type of white blood cell) count in the lungs, but this effect has not been well-studied. However, this is notable as a large portion of the irreversible damage seen in COPD patient lungs occurs due to chronic inflammation mediated by the immune system in response to inhaled irritants. Investigation of the anti-inflammatory effect of LABAs may therefore be a promising direction leading to new treatments to combat airway destruction. The goal of my project is therefore to characterize the pathway by which LABAs decrease inflammation using human tissue culture as my model system. Rather than cigarette smoke, I will use respiratory syncytial virus and lipopolysaccharide as the irritant to produce an inflammatory effect. Through this project, I aim to better understand how the inflammatory pathway is affected by the use of LABAs and furthermore, to pinpoint specific proteins as potential new drug targets for more targeted treatment of inflammation in COPD patients.