The response of human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells to cigarette smoke injury and their role in emphysema.

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Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide and a major cause of chronic disability costing the NHS approximately £500 million per year. Current treatments improve symptoms but do not reverse or cure the disease. Cigarette smoking is the major cause of COPD. How smoking leads to this damage remains unclear. We urgently need to understand how smoking damages the lung in order to discover new treatments. In this study we plan to use tissue and cells obtained from the diseased lungs of patients with COPD undergoing lung transplantation at our centre. Patients will be asked for permission to use the tissue from their diseased lung, which would normally be discarded, for research. It is hoped that by studying in the laboratory how these cells behave when exposed to cigarette smoke compared to tissues and cells obtained from people with normal lungs, we may improve understanding of why they developed COPD. The study is being carried out at the lung transplant unit at Freeman hospital, Newcastle and Newcastle University with support from the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. We hope that by understanding how COPD occurs, new treatments may be developed to help patients with this condition.