Publications by authors named "J S Duerr"

Excessive deposition of fibrillar collagen in the interstitial extracellular matrix (ECM) of human lung tissue causes fibrosis, which can ultimately lead to organ failure. Despite our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease, no cure for pulmonary fibrosis has yet been found. We screened a drug library and found that dextromethorphan (DXM), a cough expectorant, reduced the amount of excess fibrillar collagen deposited in the ECM in cultured primary human lung fibroblasts, a bleomycin mouse model, and a cultured human precision-cut lung slice model of lung fibrosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal lung disease, which is usually diagnosed late in advanced stages. Little is known about the subclinical development of IPF. We previously generated a mouse model with conditional deficiency () that develops IPF-like lung disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • In cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, increased disulfide crosslinking in mucins leads to thicker mucus, causing dysfunction; researchers developed a new compound, dPGS-SH, to reduce these crosslinks.
  • dPGS-SH shows strong mucolytic activity in sputum from CF patients, outperforming the existing treatment NAC in terms of reducing multimer intensity of key mucins and improving mucus properties.
  • The new polymer, dPGS-SH, is stable, non-toxic, and effective across various pH levels, suggesting it could be a promising option for enhancing mucus clearance in CF and related lung diseases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a severe and progressive condition in which the lung becomes scarred over time resulting in pulmonary function impairment. Classical histopathology remains an important tool for micro-structural tissue assessment in the diagnosis of PF. A novel workflow based on spatial correlated propagation-based phase-contrast micro computed tomography (PBI-microCT), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and histopathology was developed and applied to two different preclinical mouse models of PF - the commonly used and well characterized Bleomycin-induced PF and a novel mouse model for progressive PF caused by conditional Nedd4-2 KO.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

CFTR modulator therapy with elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor (ETI) has been approved for people with CF and at least one F508del allele in Europe. In the US, the ETI label has been expanded to 177 rare mutations responsive in Fischer rat thyroid cells, including , but not . However, knowledge on the effect of ETI on G85E or N1303K CFTR function remains limited.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF