SOCAAR is pleased to announce our next seminar in our 2014-2015 seminar
series.
Monday October 27, 2014, 1 – 2 pm
Wallberg Building, 200 College Street, Room 407
Airway Cell Responses to Inhaled Irritants: Evidence from Human Inhalation
Challenge Studies
Dr. Neil Alexis
Professor, Dept. of Pediatrics
UNC School of Medicine
UNC Chapel Hill
Cells can be acquired from the lung by several techniques, some more
invasive than others. Induced sputum is a relatively non-invasive method of
acquiring cells from the surfaces of the large central airways. This is
ideal for examining disease states like asthma, where the primary pathology
is proximal to large airways, as well as air pollutants like ozone and
coarse size PM whose deposition favors large airways. Techniques are now
being used to measure a variety of cell responses following exposure to air
pollutants –these include differential cell counts, phenotype and functional
activation of inflammatory cells, hydration state of the airways,
viscoelastic properties mucus, mucin content, gene expression signatures and
regulators of gene expression like miRNA. The literature has shown that the
presence of pre-existing airway disease has not definitively produced more
deleterious cell responses following exposure to ozone. Recently, we
classified subjects as inflammatory/neutrophil Responders or Non-Responders,
regardless of disease status, and have shown this to be an interesting and
robust method of identifying potentially susceptible individuals to the
health effects of ozone and likely other pollutants. Indeed we have shown
that Responders have a significantly muted genetic response to ozone while
concomitantly having an up-regulated inflammatory and innate immune response
compared to Non-Responders. Evidence from controlled human exposure studies
with ozone will be discussed.
