Wednesday, 16 December 2015

Lighting Up Lungs – The PROTEUS Project: An interdisciplinary approach to visualising disease by Professor Kevin Dhaliwal, MRC Centre for Inflammation Research at the University of Edinburgh; and the PROTEUS team, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council at the University of Edinburgh.

Professors Dhaliwal and Thomson discuss an inter-disciplinary research project that brings together experts in astronomy, engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. The experts, from three universities, have united with a common goal to help us ‘see the light‘ in the lung.

Lung infections, inflammation and lung cancer are major causes of disability and death in the world in people young and old. We know very little about what actually happens deep inside the human lung during life. Scientists have spent decades developing drugs and other experimental treatments to try to find new ways to help patients. Unless we can accurately understand the processes that happen deep inside human lungs, none of these therapeutic advances will rapidly enter clinical care.