Structure and function of small airways in asthma patients revisited

WB van den Bosch, AL James… - European Respiratory …, 2021 - Eur Respiratory Soc
Small airways (< 2 mm in diameter) are probably involved across almost all asthma
severities and they show proportionally more structural and functional abnormalities with …

Extracellular matrix stiffness regulates human airway smooth muscle contraction by altering the cell-cell coupling

SR Polio, SE Stasiak, RR Jamieson, JL Balestrini… - Scientific reports, 2019 - nature.com
For an airway or a blood vessel to narrow, there must be a connected path that links the
smooth muscle (SM) cells with each other, and transmits forces around the organ, causing it …

Hyperresponsiveness: relating the intact airway to the whole lung

KR Lutchen, PD Paré, CY Seow - Physiology, 2017 - journals.physiology.org
We relate changes of the airway wall to the response of the intact airway and the whole lung.
We address how mechanical conditions and specific structural changes for an airway …

Stiffening of the extracellular matrix is a sufficient condition for airway hyperreactivity

RR Jamieson, SE Stasiak, SR Polio… - Journal of Applied …, 2021 - journals.physiology.org
The current therapeutic approach to asthma focuses exclusively on targeting inflammation
and reducing airway smooth muscle force to prevent the recurrence of symptoms. However …

Inter-airway structural heterogeneity interacts with dynamic heterogeneity to determine lung function and flow patterns in both asthmatic and control simulated lungs

GM Donovan - Journal of theoretical biology, 2017 - Elsevier
Asthma is a disease involving both airway remodelling (eg thickening of the airway wall) and
acute, reversible airway narrowing driven by airway smooth muscle contraction. Both of …

Small airways vs large airways in asthma: time for a new perspective

GM Donovan, PB Noble - Journal of Applied Physiology, 2021 - journals.physiology.org
Is asthma predominately a disease of the large or small airways? The question has vexed
these pages for at least 50 years (1–4) and although a consensus appears to be emerging …

Tissue traction microscopy to quantify muscle contraction within precision-cut lung slices

S Ram-Mohan, Y Bai, N Schaible… - … of Physiology-Lung …, 2020 - journals.physiology.org
In asthma, acute bronchospasm is driven by contractile forces of airway smooth muscle
(ASM). These forces can be imaged in the cultured ASM cell or assessed in the muscle strip …

Smooth muscle in human bronchi is disposed to resist airway distension

M Gazzola, C Henry, C Couture, D Marsolais… - Respiratory physiology …, 2016 - Elsevier
Studying airway smooth muscle (ASM) in conditions that emulate the in vivo environment
within which the bronchi normally operate may provide important clues regarding its elusive …

Therapeutic response to bronchial thermoplasty: toward feasibility of patient selection based on modeling predictions

GM Donovan, PB Noble… - Journal of Applied …, 2022 - journals.physiology.org
Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) is a treatment for moderate-to-severe asthma in which the
airway smooth muscle layer is targeted directly using thermal ablation. Although it has been …

A life off the beaten track in biomechanics: Imperfect elasticity, cytoskeletal glassiness, and epithelial unjamming

L Atia, JJ Fredberg - Biophysics Reviews, 2023 - pubs.aip.org
Textbook descriptions of elasticity, viscosity, and viscoelasticity fail to account for certain
mechanical behaviors that typify soft living matter. Here, we consider three examples. First …