LIFT SIGNED

Project "LIFT" data sheet

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 Partnership

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 Project objective

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is an inflammatory lung condition caused e.g. by sepsis, pneumonia and head or chest injury, affecting annually 133,000 people in Europe and 255,000 in the US. ARDS is characterized by the depletion of the lungs’ inner liquid coating (pulmonary surfactant), which reduces surface tension forces and allows the lungs to expand. Patients span across all age groups and lay anesthetized in the intensive care unit with mortality rates at 40%. Although surfactant replacement therapy (SRT) is a life-saving procedure in newborn neonates, current administration methods to treat adults and even children remain inadequate. Endotracheal surfactant liquid instillations used in babies fail in larger lungs: liquid drains into pools, drowning these lung regions while leaving others untreated. Meanwhile, inhalation aerosols can only deliver small doses (<1ml/hr for nebulizers), far from the required ~100ml of surfactant. To overcome such hurdles, we advocate using liquid foam as a surfactant carrier to the lungs, i.e. LIquid Foam Therapy (LIFT). Foam is weakly affected by gravity, distributes homogeneously within lungs and in abundance. LIFT brings a paradigm shift in SRT, and more broadly, in the field of therapeutic pulmonary delivery. Our team bridges expertise in clinical ARDS treatment in neonates, pulmonary medicine, biomedical engineering and business. Together, we have demonstrated the feasibility of our patent pending technology, both in vitro in 3D printed and microfabricated airway models, and ex vivo in excised pig lungs using fluoroscopy. In this PoC, we will optimize the foam formulation, design and construct a delivery device, and run pre-clinical in vivo animal experiments. LIFT has the potential to extend far beyond ARDS treatment and be leveraged for other lung therapies, such as stem cell delivery directly to the lungs to treat Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).