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

慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）是全球第五大死亡原因，也是造成慢性残疾的主要原因，NHS每年为此花费约5亿英镑。目前的治疗方法改善了症状，但不能逆转或治愈这种疾病。吸烟是慢性阻塞性肺病的主要原因。吸烟是如何导致这种损害的尚不清楚。为了找到新的治疗方法，我们迫切需要了解吸烟是如何损害肺部的。在这项研究中，我们计划使用从我们中心接受肺移植的COPD患者的病变肺中获得的组织和细胞。患者将被要求允许使用他们患病肺部的组织，这些组织通常会被丢弃，用于研究。希望通过在实验室中研究这些细胞在暴露于香烟烟雾时与从正常肺部获得的组织和细胞相比的表现，我们可以更好地理解他们为什么会患上COPD。在阿斯利康制药公司的支持下，这项研究正在纽卡斯尔弗里曼医院和纽卡斯尔大学的肺移植部门进行。我们希望通过了解COPD是如何发生的，可以开发出新的治疗方法来帮助患有这种疾病的患者。

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.