VCU Researchers Awarded NIH Grant to Help Prevent Lung Injuries

By Joan Izzo
VCU School of Engineering

Three Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have received a four-year National Institutes of Health project grant totaling more than $1 million to develop a multiscale hybrid mathematical model to help prevent ventilator-caused lung injury.

Ramana Pidaparti, Ph.D., a professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering in the VCU School of Engineering, is a key collaborator working with principal investigators Rebecca L. Heise, Ph.D., in the biomedical engineering department, and Angela Marie Reynolds, Ph.D., in the VCU Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, to develop a mathematical model of ventilator-induced inflammation in an aged lung. 

“We want to try to understand how the cells in the lungs respond to the mechanical forces of breathing," said Heise. "The purpose of the grant is to put different parameters of the math model together to help clinicians use the correct ventilator settings on patients to help prevent lung injuries that occur due to the ventilator.”

The researchers are combining models at the cellular, tissue and organ level to determine the levels of inflammation in an aged lung that has ventilator-induced inflammation.

Heise, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is conducting lab experiments using stretched aged and non-aged lung cells.  Her cell and tissue research mimics a lung injury and ventilates mice with small tubes similar to a critically ill patient.

“Most people study young healthy animals and that’s not very realistic as most patients on ventilators are elderly," she said. "That’s why we’re looking at aged mice. We’re looking at the response in the cells, the lung mechanics and the inflammatory process in the whole animal.”

Incidences of respiratory failure impacts approximately one in 3,000 U.S. residents with mortality rates of approximately 40 percent. The majority of patients receiving mechanical ventilation are the elderly whose respiratory systems fail to function due to various lung and airway disease, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome and asthma.

The research is supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01AG041823.

The Research Project Grant is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by the NIH. It provides support for health-related research and development based on the mission of the NIH.