Vincent Auyeung, MD, PhD

Research Project:
Why Do Transitional Cells Promote Scarring in Pulmonary Fibrosis?

Grant Awarded:

Innovation Award

Research Topics:

basic biologic mechanisms
combination therapies experimental therapeutics
computational biology

Research Diseases:

interstitial lung disease
pulmonary fibrosis

Some injuries to the lung resolve with minimal residual deficits, while other injuries lead to chronic lung disease. For example, survivors of most lung infections actually have almost no measurable long-term deficits in lung function. At the other extreme, patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) suffer chronic lung injury causing progressive accumulation of scar tissue, called fibrosis. This leads to respiratory failure and death. Normally, after lung injury, certain cells temporarily change into a transitional state. These transitional cells typically differentiate back into new lung cells to repair the lung tissue. However, for reasons we do not yet understand, in IPF these transitional cells accumulate and produce signals that promote scarring. We will study the fundamental molecular and cellular mechanisms of how mature lung cells repair the lung. Our ultimate aim is to find therapies to restore normal repair in pulmonary fibrosis.

Innovation Award, applied under the Hastings Award

Page last updated: October 11, 2024

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