My research in the Black lab is focused on ventilator induced lung injury (VILI), and pulmonary hypertension (PH). To study VILI in vitro I stretch the pulmonary cells in a Flexcell device, which uses air pressure to stretch the cells at intervals to mimic mechanical ventilation in vivo. Through this process I can analyze the molecular mechanisms that regulate VILI, ranging from barrier involved proteins to mitochondrial disruption and identify key intracellular proteins that are important in this process. The main objective of this research is to identify molecular pathways that are important for VILI and lead to the development of new drugs to treat pulmonary disease. My research with PH, similarly, focuses on finding molecular pathways that are important for the metabolic alterations in this disease that contribute to it’s altered phenotype.
