Publications by authors named "L T Merriam"
Article Synopsis
- Fibrosis contributes to serious damage in organs, but treatments targeting specific activators have often failed, leading researchers to focus on the leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR) as a key player in fibrotic diseases like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
- In IPF, myofibroblasts highly express LIF, and fibroblasts in key fibrotic areas coexpress LIF and LIFR, demonstrating LIFR's role in amplifying signals from other fibrotic drivers like TGFβ1, IL-4, and IL-13.
- Blocking LIFR reduces the activation of profibrotic genes and highlights LIFR's function as a master amplifier of harmful signals
Neurological injury drives most deaths and morbidity among patients hospitalized for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Despite its clinical importance, there are no effective pharmacological therapies targeting post-cardiac arrest (CA) neurological injury. Here, we analyzed circulating immune cells from a large cohort of patients with OHCA, finding that lymphopenia independently associated with poor neurological outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFibrotic interstitial lung diseases (fILDs) have poor survival rates and lack effective therapies. Despite evidence for immune mechanisms in lung fibrosis, immunotherapies have been unsuccessful for major types of fILD. Here, we review immunological mechanisms in lung fibrosis that have the potential to impact clinical practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Fibrosis drives end-organ damage in many diseases. However, clinical trials targeting individual upstream activators of fibroblasts, such as TGFβ, have largely failed. Here, we target the leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR) as a "master amplifier" of multiple upstream activators of lung fibroblasts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- - The study focuses on the importance of immunophenotyping in patients who experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and the challenges involved in this research area.
- - It outlines the necessary steps for creating a clinical cohort, including patient enrollment, sample collection, and ethical review processes.
- - The protocol details the methods for collecting blood samples and preserving certain immune cells, specifically focusing on modulating immune checkpoints in OHCA patients, which can also be applied to other critical illnesses.