Health Network Toronto Gen. Res. Acute lung injury occurs in many clinical situations such as lung infection, sepsis, ARDS, pulmonary embolism and lung transplantation. In critically ill patients, mechanical ventilation is often essential to support life. However improper ventilation itself can cause lung injury.
Cytokines are important mediators of acute inflammatory lung injury.
My additional studies are to examine the clinical impact of cytokines in acute lung injury, and to explore cytokine-related molecular therapy. Our recent work has demonstrated that mechanical stretch, such as occurs in lung cells during ventilation, stimulated cytokine production from primary cultured rat lung cells. We are exploring a fundamental question of how cells sense mechanical stimulation, and convert this into an intracellular biochemical signal. Cells will be maintained statically as control or subjected to mechanical stretch. The activity of Src, protein tyrosine phosphorylation will be examined.