104450Censo Alveolar Macrophage for COPDClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UK"In the UK today, over 1.2 million people suffer from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) which costs the NHS over £1.5 billion. Patients suffering from COPD are unable to empty air out of their lungs because their airways have been narrowed, mainly due to bronchitis and emphysema. The disease profoundly limits the quality of life of its suffers. It is strongly associated with the elderly and as our population ages, the incidence and cost of the disease is expected to rise. This is despite falling rates of smoking - the major cause of the disease in the UK. The WHO identifies COPD as the fourth most common cause of death due to both smoking and air pollution. There is no cure. Despite the compelling need for better treatments, there has been little progress in the last 40 years. Treatments include patients inhaling bronchodilators which open up their airways and corticosteroids, which seek to reduce lung inflammation. These provide some short term respite to the condition but do nothing to stop or reverse the damage to the patients lungs. A new method to screen for drugs that can treat the diseases is urgently needed. Our goal for the CAM project is to use stem cell technology to develop a new drug screening technology. In the CAM project, we propose to develop a capacity to transform stem cells into one of the cell types which has a critical role in the development of COPD, known as alveolar macrophage. These cells are found in the lung and are responsible for detecting, engulfing and destroying bacteria and other pathogens and also dying human cells. For patients suffering from COPD, these cells fail to function properly so that they do not perform the essential role maintaining healthy lungs and instead may cause exacerbate the dysfunction of the lungs -- contributing to the chronic nature of the disease. As well as creating alveolar macrophage, we will demonstrate that the ""inflamed"" state of these cells can controlled by drugs and that these effects can be measured by testing systems in our labs. If we can do this, we will have made substantial progress towards providing a wholly new research technology which will support the discovery of new drugs. Our hope is that the CAM project will accelerate research into ways to address the chronic inflammation which is an important contributor to this terrible disease."