Use of mouse models to study mechanisms of pathology in viral exacerbations of COPD

Funded Activity Summary

We want to understand why cigarette smoke exposure worsens respiratory virus infections. People who smoke, or who have smoked in the past, or who are exposed to environmental (passive) smoke, get sicker than nonsmokers when they get a respiratory virus infection, such as a common cold or the flu. This is true for people of all age groups, but we don't know why smoke has this effect. We think it may be because smoke interferes with some aspects of the immune response. A particular focus of our research is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. COPD is a serious lung disease which generally occurs in people who have smoked for many years. However, many COPD patients stopped smoking many years ago. COPD patients are especialy at risk of serious outcomes if they get a respiratory infection (known as an acute COPD exacerbation) and patients with COPD exacerbations use a lot of health care resources. There are no effective drugs to prevent or treat COPD exacerbations. We are currently using a mouse model of smoke exposure and virus infection to do this research, which is a much faster and more ethical approach than using humans in research. We believe that we will get a better understanding of how smoke affects the immune response to infection. This is likely to contribute to the development of better drugs for COPD exacerbations and other types of smoking related lung disease.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2007

End Date: 01-01-2009

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $411,960.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Medical Virology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

airway inflammation | chronic obstructive pulmonary disease | environmental tobacco smoke | influenza | respiratory synyctial virus | respiratory virus

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