UF researcher receives $600,000 federal grant to investigate lung damage repair

University of Florida pediatric critical-care researcher Ron Sanders Jr., M.D., has received a federal grant for more than $600,000 to investigate methods of repairing damaged lung tissue in children, using a developing form of blood cell.

Sanders, a UF assistant professor of pediatrics, recently received a five-year, $615,859 mentored clinical scientist award from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will fund two studies on progenitor blood cells, which develop into blood cells, to determine whether they could treat acute lung injury, a potentially fatal lung dysfunction caused by trauma or infection.

One study will use a mouse model to investigate how radiation therapy sometimes causes acute lung injury in pediatric cancer patients. By learning how progenitor blood cells are able to join themselves to blood vessels, Sanders hopes to develop a method of delivering corrective genes to the lungs to prevent acute lung injury.

The other study carries a similar goal. Sanders will use a mouse model to investigate a toxic protein called lipopolysaccharide, found in bacteria such as E. coli, that causes infection and low blood pressure and can lead to acute lung injury. Here, progenitor blood cells taken from bone marrow may provide a method to deliver therapeutic genes to the lungs.

Sanders will perform his research under the supervision of Ed Scott, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology and director of the UF Shands Cancer Center Program in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.