Lungs

Sarah Hedtrich heads a guest group at the Max Delbrück Center. The Johanna Quandt Professor at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is working on organ-on-a-chip models to develop new treatment options for rare hereditary and inflammatory skin and lung diseases.

If a secretion in the lungs’ alveoli is not cleared regularly, breathing difficulties can develop. In a study published in Science Immunology, a team led by Alexander Mildner and Achim Leutz has now explained the pivotal role of the transcription factor C/EBPb in this process.

In cases of severe COVID-19, the lungs develop unusually pronounced scarring, scientists from Berlin, Aachen and Würzburg report in “Cell”. Macrophages are central to this process. Misguided wound healing responses resulting in scarring may explain why COVID-19 patients remain in respiratory failure for so long.

A severe course of COVID-19 disease is not caused by the direct destruction of the lung due to the multiplication of the virus. As researchers from Berlin report in the journal "Nature Communications", inflammatory processes and the endothelium of the lung are involved.