Lay summary
At the heart of managing the critical illness patient is preservation of lung function and thus ensuring appropriate exchange of the gases needed for living. In the acute and critically unwell patient this process can be compromised and mechanical ventilation is required. Unfortunately the process of forcing air into a patients lungs can itself cause additional damage to the lung tissue. This is called ventilator induced lung injury (VILI) and characterised by swollen and inflamed lungs. This makes gas exchange less efficient and adversely effects patient outcomes. Treatment to date has focussed on modulating various mechanical ventilation parameters to lessen the injury. Here we instead propose a drug treatment approach that for the first time will prevent the ventilator injury being initiated and from progressing at the tissue level. We will test this new drug class in models of VILI to confirm activity and support the case for clinical development.