Creating a new model of lung scarring
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Studying the biology of asthma: a pilot study to create new models of airways remodelling
IRAS ID
171877
Contact name
Ian Sabroe
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
People with asthma can sometimes get lung scarring which prevents their lungs working normally even between asthma attacks. How this happens is still not well known. We want to set up a new model to examine how scarring may develop. We are going to take blood cells from people with asthma, and from people without asthma as a comparison. We will purify cells from the blood called fibrocytes, which are possibly involved in lung scarring. To see how these work we need to study them in life, but we want to try to reduce the numbers of animals used in research. We therefore plan to transplant these cells into tiny fish embryos, where we can watch them grow and see how they react with the fish's immune system. This has a much reduced impact on the welfare of the animals than current experiments that are performed on mice. We hope to set up a system where we can see how scarring happens in very simple animals, without needing to use more traditional research animals like mice.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Sheffield Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/YH/0022
Date of REC Opinion
6 Feb 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion