(588c) Polymer Lung Surfactant Therapy for Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Animal-derived lung surfactants annually save 40,000 infants with neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (NRDS) in the US. Lung surfactants have further potential in treating nearly 200,000 adult patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) each year in the US. ARDS is a complication associated with increased alveolar membrane permeability followed by subsequent lung surfactant deactivation and inflammation in the lungs. Often described by patients as “like drowning from within”, lack of functioning surfactant causes alveolar collapse, thus resulting in impaired oxygenation of the blood. This problem aggressively propagates into multiple organ failure and eventually death for about 40% of patients. All prior clinical trials testing NRDS therapeutics (animal-derived lung surfactants) in ARDS patients were unsuccessful. For use in treatment of ARDS, the properties of current NRDS therapeutics need to be modified. Although the limitations of current therapeutics have been known since 1990s, there has not been much improvement. As a result, there are currently no existing therapeutics for ARDS, and treatment remains limited to invasive options such as mechanical ventilation and ECMO. To address this need, our laboratory has been exploring a radically different approach, in which, instead of conventional lipid and protein-based formulations, synthetic biocompatible polymers are used as the active therapeutic ingredient. This talk will discuss our endeavor, driven by engineering curiosity and a humanitarian motivation, to develop a first-in-class polymer lung surfactant therapy for ARDS treatment.