Difference between revisions of "Team:UCL/Lungs"

Vital for respiration, the lungs are responsible for keeping us alive. As we age, our lungs become less effective at carrying out their function and these age-related changes contribute somewhat to an older person's reduced ability to do vigorous exercise, especially intense aerobic exercise. More specifically, the effects of aging on the respiratory system are similar to those that occur in other systems: there is a decrease in peak airflow and gas exchange and a decline in the effectiveness of lung defence mechanisms.

It’s also known that ageing is the main risk factor for major non-communicable chronic lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), most forms of lung cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. COPD leads to chronic inflammation and progressive destruction of lung tissues and its prevalence increases with age. Its currently a major public health problem worldwide and is the fourth leading cause of death in the world.

With a large and growing aging population, it is critical to understand how the body changes with age and how this impacts the entire respiratory system. Understanding the aging process in the lung is necessary in order to provide optimal care to our aging population. Hence Biosynthage wanted to create a therapy targeting the ageing lungs, to maximise quality of life of the ageing population and increase the healthy human lifespan by preventing the onset of these deadly age-related diseases.

Ageing Lungs: What is the cause?

In order to create a preventative therapy for the lungs, we needed to first investigate what actually causes the deterioration of our lung cells as we age and how we could prevent this through a synthetic biology application in the best way.