Technical Challenges in Lung Pathophysiology

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Itsaso Garcia-Arcos, PhD

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University

Dr. Garcia-Arcos is a Research Assistant, Professor of Medicine, and group leader at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in New York. Her research focus in pulmonary medicine includes the regulation of surfactant lipid metabolism by alveolar type 2 cells and smoke-induced damage to airway epithelium. Dr. Garcia-Arcos earned a degree in Biochemistry and then completed postgraduate and PhD training on liver lipid metabolism at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). She defended her PhD with European Doctor Mention after completing research stays at the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and the University of Bordeaux (France). She then moved to New York for postdoctoral research in metabolic disease at Columbia University Medical Center, and later completed a second postdoctoral fellowship in pulmonary biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Garcia-Arcos has been awarded research funding from the NIH, American Heart Association and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, amongst others. She has published in journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Thorax, and Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and she has delivered oral communications in multiple conferences.

Elena Lopez-Rodriguez, PhD

Charité Univeristätsmedizin Berlin

Dr. Lopez-Rodriguez is a Research Associate and teacher at Charité Univeristätsmedizin Berlin in Germany. Her research focus on different lung pathologies, specifically in those ones where lung surfactant activity and homeostasis impairment leads to defects on lung mechanics and physiology. Dr. Lopez-Rodriguez obtained her Biology degree and completed her PhD on biophysics of lung surfactant at the Complutense University Madrid, Spain. During her PhD training, she visited different universities, such as University of California San Francisco (USA), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), and Universities of Giessen, and Marburg Lung Center (Germany). She was then granted an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for postdoctoral researchers to further research on the impact of surfactant inactivation in lung fibrosis at Hannover Medical School (Germany). There she obtained funding to continue with research on a mouse model of SP-C deficiency and get involved in the teaching of master and doctoral students. Dr. Lopez-Rodriguez has published in journals such as the Biophysical Journal, Journal of Lipid Research, Journal of Biological Chemistry, American Journal of Physiology, Thorax and American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.

Collection Overview

The study of pulmonary disease poses unique technical challenges that are continuously being addressed by researchers as technology evolves. This collection is aimed towards protocols and techniques that otherwise would escape the grasp of the general lung biomedicine research community.

The pulmonary epithelial-endothelial barrier separates the external medium, the air, from the internal medium, the bloodstream. The exposure to air pollutants, bacteria, virus and other agents pose a risk for epithelial cells, which need to be equipped to combat oxidation, infection, apoptosis and other types of injury. The responses often involve recruitment of the native and adaptive immune systems, as well as tissue regeneration. For effective gas exchange between air and blood, alveolar walls need to expand and contract in each respiration cycle. This action is enabled by the presence of pulmonary surfactant, a lipoprotein complex with intricate biophysical properties and metabolism spanning different cell types. Alveoli are also exposed to potential external damaging agents and their resident cells partake in innate immunity. In addition, the lung needs to maintain the homeostasis of the extracellular matrix and perform other physiological functions that require the coordination of multiple cell types through exquisitely regulated mechanisms. Dysregulation of these mechanisms and loss of homeostasis often results in pulmonary pathologies.

This collection aims to capture protocols detailing the methods of study of lung pathophysiology amongst the entire cellular and molecular continuum. Studies using unique approaches, novel techniques, and methods that promote experimental reproducibility are welcome to this collection.