Category: Lung Disease News

Researchers report that a drug approved for treating patients with autoimmune disease helped to prevent lung damage and death in mice infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19 in humans. Source

Despite smoking’s well-known role in causing lung cancer, a significant number of patients who develop lung tumors have never smoked. While scientists are still working to understand what spurs cancer in so-called ‘never-smokers,’ a study suggests that 78% to 92% of lung cancers in patients who have never smoked can be treated with precision drugs already approved by the Food and Drug Administration to target specific mutations in a patient’s tumor. Source

Malignant tumors can enhance their ability to survive and spread by suppressing anti-tumor immune cells in their vicinity, but a new study has uncovered a new way to counter this immunosuppressive effect. Source

Researchers have identified an association between early lower respiratory tract infections and the development of obstructive sleep apnea in children. Source

A new study showed that stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) was as effective as surgery at providing long-term benefits to patients with operable early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and generated minimal side effects. The study is the first of its kind to compare long-term results of SABR against surgical treatment in patients with operable early-stage NSCLC. Source

CD8+ T cells — known as “killer” T cells — are the assassins of the immune system. Once they are primed, they seek out and destroy other cells that are infected with virus or cells that are cancerous. Priming involves dendritic cells — sentinels of the immune system. In an influenza infection in the lungs, for example, lung-migratory dendritic cells capture a piece of the viral antigen, and then migrate out of the lung to the place where naïve T cells reside, to present that antigen to the CD8+ T cells. This primes the T cells to know which cells to attack. The place for the priming in influenza had long been thought to be restricted to a single anatomical site — the lung-draining, mediastinal lymph nodes that lie between the lungs and the spine. This lymph node-centric paradigm now has been challenged. Source

A genomic analysis of lung cancer in people with no history of smoking has found that a majority of these tumors arise from the accumulation of mutations caused by natural processes in the body. This study describes three molecular subtypes of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. These insights will help unlock the mystery of how lung cancer arises in people who have no history of smoking and may guide the development of more precise clinical treatments. Source

Researchers show stem-like T cells within certain lymph nodes could be natural cancer fighters. Source

A new study shows that losing weight and treating excess levels of fat in the blood may help prevent lung disease in those exposed to dangerous levels of fine particles from fire, smoke and toxic chemicals. Source

Regenerative medicine researchers have created a model (using pluripotent stem cells) to show how dysfunction of a highly specialized cell of the air sacs, the type 2 pneumocyte, initiates the fibrotic cascade that characterizes a number of adult and pediatric lung diseases, including IPF and childhood interstitial lung disease (chILD). Source