The Building Blocks of Lung Repair: One Nanoparticle, Two Solutions

Authors

• Casie Slaybaugh, Virginia Commonwealth University

Original Publication Date

2026

Document Type

Presentation

Comments

12th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 9, 2026.

Abstract

Acute lung injury and resultant fibrosis severely degrade the pulmonary extracellular matrix (ECM), increasing susceptibility to antibiotic-resistant infections like Pseudomonas. To address this, researchers developed ultra-small nanoparticles derived from healthy lung ECM. These particles deliver essential biochemical building blocks to repair damaged tissue and prevent fibrosis. Crucially, specific ECM components exhibit inherent antimicrobial properties that inhibit bacterial growth. This dual-action nanotherapeutics strategy offers a novel, non-traditional antibiotic approach to simultaneously promote lung regeneration and combat opportunistic respiratory infections.

Accessibility Note

Content is digitally accessible 2026

Transcription

Casie Slaybaugh, The Building Blocks of Lung Repair: One Nanoparticle, Two Solutions. Casie is from the College of Engineering. Their advisor is Dr. Rebecca Heise. Hello, everyone. I am here today to talk to you about a new type of nanoparticle that we are testing in our lab to treat acute lung injury. The material that my project deals with is called extracellular matrix, or ECM. When most people think of the tissues in our body, they think of it as just a collection of cells. But the cells don't just exist on their own. In reality, they live within a complex structure called the extracellular matrix. You can think of the ECM as the house that your cells live in. And just like your house, the ECM is made of a ton of different building materials. There are long proteins like collagen and elastin, sticky proteins like fibronectin and laminin, glycosaminoglycans, everything. There are so many components. components. And when our lungs get damaged, the components of the ECM are also damaged. This can happen from things like trauma, infection, et cetera. This is where the work in our lab starts. We take healthy lung ECM and break it down into its components, into the lumber, bricks, rebar, and we use that to help repair damaged lung tissue. tissue. The way that we do that is by creating a nanoparticle using the healthy ECM. The nanoparticles are very, very small pieces of the ECM components. 360,000 of these particles would fit on the tip of a needle. That's how small they are. They are so small that the damaged lung tissue can take them in and use those healthy building materials to help rebuild their own damaged ECM. Using these nanoparticles, we can help reverse or prevent lung fibrosis and help repair damaged tissue. But repairing damaged tissue is not the coolest thing that these nanoparticles can do. When we started looking closer at some of the specific components in the nanoparticles, at the 2x4s, the BRICS, we found that some of those components were actually antimicrobial. That means that they kill bacteria. When we tested them in the lab, they slowed bacterial growth in plates, and when we tested them in an active Pseudomonas lung infection, they helped slow the infection there too. This matters because damaged lungs are more vulnerable to opportunistic infections, infections that happen because the body is already weakened by disease. A lot of the microbes that cause these infections, things like Pseudomonas or also MRSA, are becoming increasingly resistant to traditional antibiotics. antibiotics. That means we need new treatments for lung infection that go beyond traditional antibiotics. So the big picture here is that these nanoparticles might help us kill two birds with one stone. We can supply the damaged lung with the materials that it already uses to build and repair our lungs, and that might help it fight infection too. Thanks.

Rights

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