How Inflammation is controlled in Lung Disease
Professor Moira Whyte heads the
Academic Unit of Respiratory Medicine in the School of Medicine and Biomendical
Sciences. Within this group, 3 Respiratory Pysicians have their own research
groups, all of which study inflammation in lung disease. Inflammation is the
name given to the processes involved in the clearing of infections and wound
healing in the lung. Whilst inflammation is essential for health, unwanted or
excessive inflammation is at the route of many important lung diseases,
including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and scarring
lung diseases (where fibrosis is present). The group is trying to understand how
inflammation is turned on and off in the lung, and how this relates to the
recruitment of inflammatory white blood cells called neutrophils into the lung,
and their removal at the end of inflammation. The group believes that if we
could understand more clearly how inflammation occurs, and what regulates
neutrophil recruitment and activation in the lung, we would perhaps be able to
design new ways of helping beneficial inflammation in lung infections, or
turning off harmful inflammation in inflammatory diseases.
Physicians within this group are:
Ian Sabroe,
Stephen Renshaw (see also his pages at
Centre for Developmental & Biomedical Genetics),
Moira Whyte and
Sarah Walmsley.
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