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News from the Institute for Lung Research
2024
The Von Behring-Röntgen-Stiftung promotes research in the broad spectrum of medical sciences at the Philipps-Universität Marburg and the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen by financially supporting research projects and symposia and by grants and awards for outstanding researchers and projects. Starting in January 2024, six outstanding research projects from young researchers will be supported with 1 million Euro.
Two of these six researchers are members of the Institute for Lung Research! We congratulate Prof. Dr. Mareike Lehmann from the Lung Inflammaging Lab and Dr. Anna Lena Lung from the Young Researcher Group!
As part of the funded project, Mareike Lehmann will be focusing on the role of extracellular vesicles in the accompanying symptoms of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an age-related, progressive lung disease with a fatal course. She is particularly interested in the influence of these vesicles on ageing processes in the heart.
Anna Lena Jung will decipher the antibiotic resistance of Klebsiella pneumoniae, a hospital germ that can cause severe pneumonia. Here, she is focusing on the role of outer membrane vesicles, small vesicles that are released under the influence of antibiotics. Her results will add to the development of new therapeutic approaches against the increasing antibiotic resistance of K. pneumoniae and to the improvement of our understanding of how the disease is triggered.
2023
How the Lung Fights against Bacterial Attack
Infections of the lower respiratory tract caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae (Spn) are a leading cause of death worldwide. Dr. Björn Klabunde, who pursued his doctoral thesis in the laboratory of Prof. Schmeck, discovered a new salvage pathway in Spn infections. Together with colleagues from the research cluster Diffusible signals, he investigated the bronchial epithelial cellular response to Spn infection on the transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolic level.
He found the NAD+ salvage pathway to be dysregulated upon infection in a cell line model, in primary human lung tissue, and in vivo in rodents, leading to a reduced production of NAD+. Knockdown of NAD+ salvage enzymes (NAMPT, NMNAT1) increased bacterial replication. NAD+ treatment of Spn inhibited its growth while growth of other respiratory pathogens improved. Boosting NAD+ production increased NAD+ levels in immortalized and primary cells and decreased bacterial replication upon infection. NAD+ treatment of Spn dysregulated the bacterial metabolism and reduced intrabacterial ATP. Enhancing the bacterial ATP metabolism abolished the antibacterial effect of NAD+.
These exciting findings of the NAD+ salvage pathway acting as an antibacterial pathway in Spn infections and the prediction of NAD+ as an antibacterial mechanism were published in Nature Communications.
ECM Award for Mareike Lehmann
Prof. Dr. Mareike Lehmann, Professor for Translational Inflammation Research at the Institute for Lung Research, will be awarded the Early Career Member Award (ECM Award) of the European Respiratory Society (ERS). She was chosen for her pionieering work on cellular aging phenotypes in chronic lung diseases, including Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) and Chronic Obstractive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
The ECM Award, which is intended to honour a promising early-career member of ERS based on potential for future scientific contribution as well as past and current engagement in the ERS, will be presented at the Annual International Congress 2023 of the ERS in Milan, Italy in September.
The ERS is one of the leading medical organisations in the respiratory field, with a growing membership spanning over 160 countries. The ERS prioritises science, education, and advocacy in order to promote lung health, alleviate suffering from disease, and drive standards for respiratory medicine globally. Further information can be found in die video about COPD at the ERS - RESPIRATORY channel and in the university's press release.