Pulmonary Surfactant Fortified With Cath-2 As A Novel Therapy For Bacterial Pneumonia, Brandon J. Baer

Western Research Forum

Background: Bacterial pneumonia is a leading cause of death worldwide, with high mortality rates persisting even after antibiotic treatment. Current treatments for pneumonia involve administration of antibiotics, however after the bacteria are killed they release toxic substances that induce inflammation and lung dysfunction. Host defense peptides represent a potential solution to this problem through their ability to down regulate inflammation. However, effective delivery to the lung is difficult because of the complex branching structure of the airways. My study addresses this delivery problem by using exogenous surfactant, a pulmonary delivery vehicle capable of improving spreading of these peptides throughout the …

Role Of Inos In Septic Pulmonary Microvascular Endothelial Cell Activation, Zahra Asad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

Background. Neutrophils and nitric oxide (NO) derived from inducible NO synthase (iNOS) contributes importantly to the pathophysiology of acute lung injury (ALI) and pulmonary microvascular endothelial cell (PMVEC) injury. However, the mechanism of neutrophil and neutrophil iNOS dependent PMVEC injury has not been addressed. In our studies, we assessed PMVEC activation under septic conditions, and defined the role of PMVEC vs. bone-marrow polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) iNOS in this septic PMVEC activation.

Methods and Results. We isolated PMVEC from iNOS+/+ and iNOS-/- mice lungs magnetically by microbeads attached to anti-PECAM antibodies, sorted by flow cytometry (FACS) by DiI-acetylated low density …