Neonatal lung disease among toughest challenges

Therapies to help premature babies breathe can cause permanent damage

Q: Much of your research involves lung regeneration and growth. What kind of reparative power do lungs have?

A: My laboratory has been approaching this problem from several directions. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out which cells and molecules in the lung are damaged by oxygen and infection. In addition, we are using various growth factor and stem cell approaches to see what can make the damaged lung grow normally. Our hope is to both prevent oxygen and infection from causing long-term lung damage and to stimulate normal lung growth and development in those preterm infants that have suffered lung injury.


