UA awarded $11M to study lung disorders

An $11.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will to try to answer the question: Why do some critically ill patients develop lung disorders while others do not?

The five-year study will seek to predict who will get the disorders, which affect more than 200,000 people in the United States and how to remedy them, the University of Arizona said Monday when it announced the grant.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH awarded the funds to researchers led by Dr. Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, senior vice president for health sciences at the UA who has studied acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) for more than 30 years, the UA said in a news release Monday.

“Throughout my career, as a pulmonologist in the intensive care unit, I observed firsthand the unacceptable mortality rates that occur in the critically ill with ARDS, particularly in patients of color,” Garcia said in the news release.

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Patients who suffer from trauma, gastric acid aspiration, severe pneumonia or sepsis are at risk for ARDS, which leads to inflammation that can cause the lung’s blood vessels to leak and flood the lungs.

As a result, patients may be put on mechanical ventilation. But the stress produced by the ventilator can lead to VILI.

Garcia said he and his researchers have already sequenced a number of genes involved in risk for ARDS and VILI and “have a better understanding of genetic variants in African-Americans and Latinos who are at increased risk for developing ARDS and succumbing to the disease.”

The new study will “advance a more personalized medicine approach to ARDS and VILI” and help physicians use new therapies based on the UA’s research, Garcia said.