New Insights into Surfactant and Aerosol Behavior at Airway Fluid Interfaces

The Chemical and Biological Engineering department will be hosting a seminar featuring Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Iowa, Dr. Jennifer Fiegel. The topic of the seminar will be New Insights into Surfactant and Aerosol Behavior at Airway Fluid Interfaces.

Abstract

The respiratory tract is coated and protected by the airway lining fluids, which function as dynamic semipermeable barriers that allow the exchange of gases, nutrients and water, but limit the transport of foreign material. Key to the various functional properties of these fluids, including airway stability and protection from foreign material, is the airway surfactant present at the air-fluid interface. This layer is responsible for producing low surface tensions found throughout the lung (~32 mN/m in the trachea to 10 mN/m in the alveoli) and is the first barrier that foreign materials encounter upon deposition in the lungs. My group has been interested in the behavior of surfactant at the air-water interface in different regions of the lungs (e.g. alveolar vs. conducting airways) and in how this surfactant layer interacts with and dictates the behavior of deposited aerosols. This seminar will describe some of our latest insights in this area.