The airway mucin based defense against viruses in health and chronic obstructive airway disease

Our goal is to develop tailor-made strategies to activate mucosal defense mechanisms to to counteract viral infections, in health and in chronic airway obstruction.

Mucins and their glycans are an important part of the host defense against pathogens, but also constitute a part of the pathology in chronic obstructive airway disease (COPD).

Instead of inhibiting overall mucus production, we thus see a need to delineate the mucin changes that occur in smokers, chronic bronchitis (CB), COPD and COPD with CB patient groups.

We will further identify which of these changes that are good for the host and specifically reverse harmful changes, while retaining beneficial aspects of the mucin-based defense against viruses.

Here, we will I) define the effect of propagating viruses in different cell-lines on virus glycosylation and mucin-binding, II) identify the glycan structures on peripheral airway mucins that bind viruses and are responsible for differences in mucin-virus interactions between healthy controls and long-term smokers with and without COPD and/or CB, III) investigate the ability of mucins to limit viral infection in healthy controls and long-term smokers with and without COPD and/or CB in vitro, IV) model the relation between airway microbiome, lung function, inflammatory parameters, mucin glycosylation and virus binding and V) design new strategies for enhancing the mucosal inhibition of viral infection.