Overwhelming lung inflammation frequently occurs following exposure to both direct infectious and noninfectious agents and is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. In that context, immunomodulatory strategies may be used to limit severity of impending organ damage. We sought to determine whether priming the lung by activating the immune system, or immunological priming, could accelerate resol...

Inhalation therapy has matured to include drugs that: (1) deliver nucleic acids that either lead to the restoration of a gene construct or protein coding sequence in a population of cells or suppress or disrupt production of an abnormal gene product (gene therapy); (2) deliver peptides that target lung diseases such as asthma, sarcoidosis, pulmonary hypertension, and cystic fibrosis; and (3) de...

Pleiotrophin (PTN) is a secreted cytokine that is expressed in various cancer cell lines and human tumor such as colon cancer, lung cancer, gastric cancer and melanoma. It plays significant roles in angiogenesis, metastasis, differentiation and cell growth. The expression of PTN in the adult is limited to the hippocampus in an activity-dependent manner, making it a very attractive target for ca...

Background and Objective: Lung cancer screening (LCS) with low-dose computed tomography (CT) is an established modality for detecting early-stage disease, a downstream lung cancer-related mortality benefit. The Center Medicare & Medicaid Services instituted LCS coverage in February 2015 expanded eligibility 2022. However, disparities are multifold, expanding from minority underrepresentation tr...

Small interfering RNA (siRNA)-based therapeutics have been used in humans and offer distinct advantages over traditional therapies. However, previous investigations have shown that there are several technical obstacles that need to be overcome before routine clinical applications are used. Currently, we are launching a novel class of RNAi therapeutic agents (PnkRNA™, nkRNA) that show high resis...