by Jennifer Brown, University of Iowa Illustration shows pulmonary ionocyte (pink) embedded in airway surface (blue and yellow). Credit: Guillermo Romano Ibarra, University of IowaA new study by University of Iowa researchers finds that rare lung cells known as pulmonary ionocytes facilitate the absorption of water and salt from the airway surface. This function is exactly...
by University of Montreal Processing of S peptides by furin and TMPRSS2. (A) Schematic representation of the primary structure of preproS, including its domains, the predicted furin-like S1/S2 site generating the S1 and S2 subunits, and the S2′ site preceding the fusion peptide (FP). The signal peptide (SP), N-terminal domain (NTD), receptor binding domain (RBD)...
ALPHAMED PRESS IMAGE: LYLE ARMSTRONG, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF STEM CELL SCIENCES AT NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY, UK, AND CORRESPONDING AUTHOR ON THE STUDY. CREDIT: ALPHAMED PRESS Durham, NC – A team led by researchers at Newcastle University, UK has successfully created a model of the cells found in the lungs that can be used to replicate how COVID-19 infects...
by Will Doss, Northwestern University Scott Budinger, MD, the Ernest S. Bazley Professor of Airway Diseases and chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care in the Department of Medicine, and Alexander Misharin, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, were co- senior authors of the study published in PNAS. Credit: Northwestern...
by Kat J. McAlpine, Boston University Human lung cells (blue) infected with SARS-CoV-2 (red). Courtesy of Hekman, et al. Credit: Hekman, et al. What if scientists knew exactly what impact the SARS-CoV-2 virus had inside our lung cells, within the first few hours of being infected? Could they use that information to find drugs that would...
by Ciara O’shea, Trinity College Dublin When drugs to kill microbes are ineffective, host-directed therapy uses the body’s own immune system to deal with the infection. This approach is being tested in patients with COVID-19, and now a team of researchers at Trinity College Dublin has published a study showing how it might also work...
A research team from Yale and Baylor College of Medicine has completed the largest single-cell analysis to date of lungs affected by Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), revealing how cells change in response to the disease and identifying previously unknown cell types. The findings, published in the issue of Science Advances, deepen understanding of IPF and...
As the current COVID-19 situation shows, viruses are a major health risk. But what if we could fight them using other viruses? Scientists in Berlin have created virus shells that mimic the target cells that the flu virus latches onto in the body, preventing them from taking hold and causing infection. Bacteriophages (or just phages)...
A bacterial protein fragment instigates lung tissue death in pulmonary fibrosis, a mysterious disease affecting millions of people worldwide, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Mie University in Japan. Led by Illinois microbiology and animal sciences professor Isaac Cann and Mie University immunology professor Dr. Esteban...
by Harvard University Leaky lungs are a very common side effect of heart failure, but all currently available drugs do is reduce the amount of fluid in the body, rather than plug the leak itself. A new gene therapy created at the Wyss Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital and tested in human Lung Chips blocks...
