Polymer Lung Surfactant: A Therapeutic Candidate for ARDS Developed via Polymer Physics Research

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is a life-threatening condition affecting about 200,000 patients in the United States each year. ARDS occurs when the function of native lung surfactant becomes impaired leading to a severe decrease in blood oxygenation and eventually multiple organ failures. There are currently no therapeutic surfactant formulations that have been shown to be effective in treating this condition; all prior clinical trials testing animal-derived lung surfactants in ARDS patients were unsuccessful. Our laboratory has been exploring a radically different approach, in which, instead of conventional lipid/protein-based formulations, synthetic polymers are used as the active therapeutic ingredient to control the surface tension of the alveolar epithelium. This investigation led to the development of a treatment which uses an amphiphilic block copolymer micelle formulation. This formulation has been shown to be more therapeutically effective in mouse models of acute lung injury compared to clinically available animal-derived surfactants. The polymer formulation is superior because it forms, by design, an insoluble monolayer at the alveolar air-water interface that is immune to deactivation caused by serum proteins under lung injury conditions. This talk will present accounts of our polymer physics research endeavors over the past several years that enabled the development of this first-in-class polymer lung surfactant therapy for ARDS treatment.