Project title: Towards Clinical Imaging of Inhibition of Mucus Degradation in Respiratory Diseases
Supervisor: Professor Galina Pavlovskaya Professor Alan Knox, Dr Dominick Shaw and Dr Richard Graham
Summary
Airwwy mucus plugs cause airway obstruction in patients with airways disease, such as cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis. Little is known about the effects of therapy on plug composition, airway ventilation or clinical outcome. Mucin (a major component of the plug) degradation is critical for plug clearance but in vivo methods monitoring this are lacking. We hypothesise that these changes in plug physical properties can be captured by 23Na MRI methods and propose to apply multi-scale 23Na MRI for this purpose. We will use the 9.4T scanner to tune up the relevant 23Na contrast at the molecular level ex-vivo using sputa samples of healthy volunteers and patients with bronchiectasis and cystic fribrosis pre- and post-intervention (carbocysteine/nebulised DNAse/ivacaftor) for novel 23Na whole body lung imaging at 3T and 7T in health and disease at SPMIC Nottingham. We complement results of these finding with mathematical modelling.
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