UT Tyler Awarded $211,000 NIH Grant to Help Improve Pulmonary Medications

TYLER – The University of Texas at Tyler was awarded $211,000 by the National Institutes of Health to help improve blood-clotting medications for treatments in lung disorders and diseases. The project is designed to identify dosing of fibrinolytic, or clot-busting, agents that can be safely and effectively administered to the compartment surrounding the lung to dissolve clots large enough to impair lung function. Dr. Steven Idell, UT Tyler professor of medicine and senior vice president for research, serves as principal investigator for the one-year NIH project.

This research could positively impact those with chest trauma with bleeding and retained clot formation and other forms of bleeding, including post-surgical bleeding, or coagulation disorders, such as those associated with cancer, that may cause a hemothorax – when blood collects in the space between the lung and chest wall, or pleural cavity, according to Idell.

“The results will inform dosing in anticipation of clinical trial testing that is currently scheduled to begin early in 2024 and sponsored by the clinical stage start-up company called Lung Therapeutics, Inc.,” said Idell, a UT Tyler Health Science Center pulmonary physician and researcher who has collaborated with NIH for more than 35 years.

The grant, sponsored by funding from NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, is part of the new CATALYZE funding mechanism to support translational science by funding projects that can soon enter clinical trial testing.

Idell is internationally known for his research in the causes and treatment of pulmonary fibrosis, or lung scarring. Other co-investigators who are involved in lung/respiratory research are Dr. Ali Azghani, UT Tyler professor of biology; Dr. Andrey Komissarov, UT Tyler professor of cellular and molecular biology; and Dr. Galina Florova, UT Tyler associate professor of cellular and molecular
biology.