Particles in the Lung: from Dysfunction to Treatment

The respiratory system is one of the primary portals into the body and is responsible for gas exchange and protection from airborne foreign substances.  The extent of deposition, retention, and clearance of inhaled particles is a complex interaction of physical forces, biological mechanisms, and subject's pathophysiology.  Aerosol particles that originate from toxic sources (e.g., wildland fires, cigarettes/e-cigarettes, industrial emissions) can cause local and systemic inflammation, which when exposed to chronically, can lead to dysfunction of nearly every system in the body.  Alternatively, particles may be designed for therapeutic purposes to treat, for example, asthma or respiratory distress syndrome. This talk will first focus on development of a chronic exposure platform to model occupation exposure in the context of wildland fire fighters.  The resulting changes in pulmonary function following chronic exposure will be discussed.  Switching gears, the second half of the talk will highlight the development of physiologically based computational models to estimate and optimize deposited therapeutic dose in asthmatic subjects.