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 “We want to first understand what the normal variations for healthy lungs are, then understand the pathological variations. If we can map these observations to the underlying pathology, we can understand better how structure of cilia—distribution, coordination, polarity, density—can impact actual function—how they move mucus, how well they clear in a certain direction.”

 

Professor Eva Kanso, Zohrab A. Kaprielian Fellow in Engineering and Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, is using a novel approach to mathematically model cilia in lungs. According to Amy Ryan, Professor Kanso’s collaborator, and an assistant professor of medicine at Keck, “this research could provide significant new insights into inherited and acquired airway diseases characterized by dysfunction of the cilia… Looking forward, our long-term goal is to combine lab models with computational models to create a medical tool that can help evaluate therapeutics targeting lung diseases characterized by poor mucociliary clearance—or poor functioning of self-clearing methodology in the airways.”

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