Lung Surfactant

The Lung Surfactant is a thin layer of liquid found in the alveoli made up of lipids and proteins. It is necessary in the lung because it reduces the surface tension thus reducing the energy required to breath. The lung surfactant is developed at the later stages of pregnancy and premature babies are often born without it causing respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) a potentially fatal disease. The current treatment for RDS is to instill babies with purified lung surfactant from other mammals. An improvement to the current therapy used today would be to come up with a synthetically made lung surfactant. Our project is to characterize MiniB, a synthetic version of a crucial lung surfactant protein, SP-B using Brewster Angle Microscopy, Wilhelmy surface balance, and surface pressure measurement. The data that have been collected suggest that the protein MiniB helps to raise the surface pressure (i.e. reduce surface tension) and prevents any loss of material at the interface. The results will then be used to determine what concentrations of the protein will work the best and with what lipids, eventually making a synthetic lung surfactant.