Insights into endotoxin-mediated lung inflammation and future treatment strategies

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Airway inflammatory disorders are prevalent diseases in need of better management and new therapeutics. Immunotherapies offer a solution to the problem of corticosteroid resistance.

Areas covered: The current review focuses on lipopolysaccharide (Gram-negative bacterial endotoxin)-mediated inflammation in the lung and the animal models used to study related diseases. Endotoxin-induced lung pathology is usually initiated by antigen presenting cells (APC). We will discuss different subsets of APC including lung dendritic cells and macrophages, and their role in responding to endotoxin and environmental challenges.

Expert commentary: The pharmacotherapeutic considerations to combat airway inflammation should cost-effectively improve quality of life with sustainable and safe strategies. Selectively targeting APCs in the lung offer the potential for a promising new strategy for the better management and treatment of inflammatory lung disease.

KEYWORDS:

• Airway inflammation
• endotoxin
• antigen presenting cells
• COPD
• asthma
• anti-inflammatories

Declaration of interest

M Plebanski is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow. A Chakraborty is supported by a Co-funded Monash Graduate Scholarship. C Selomulya is an ARC Future Fellow. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

supplementary material

supplementary data data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This project is supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) under the Discovery program [DP150101058].

Notes on contributors

Simon G. Royce

Amlan Chakraborty reviewed the literature, developed the manuscript with supervision from Simon G. Royce, Cordelia Selomulya, Magdalena Plebanski, and Jennifer C. Boer. All authors revised, edited and proofread the manuscript.