Hong-Long Ji
Loyola University Chicago, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a sudden lung failure in which the lungs' air sacs flood and stop delivering oxygen. Among intensive care patients, it is common and deadly, with an overall death rate near 44%.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
acute respiratory distress syndrome
alcohol misuse
alcohol use disorder
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Rank the leading predictors of death in alcoholic and nonalcoholic ARDS patients across 1,204 clinical variables from NIH-funded clinical trials, combining random forest models with SHAP, a method that shows each variable's influence.
- Identify causal pathways to death specific to alcohol misuse in 5,568 ARDS trial patients, using causal discovery, mediation analysis and causal inference confirmed with predictive models.
- Identify exosomal proteins and signaling networks in lung lavage fluid of ARDS patients that regulate stem cell repair of air sacs, comparing mild, moderate and severe disease with bioinformatics.
- Test whether selected exosomal signals direct alveolar type 2 cells, the lung's air-sac stem cells, to rebuild air sacs, using human and mouse 3D organoids and genetically engineered mice.
More about the research
Chronic heavy drinking raises both the risk of ARDS and the risk of dying from it. This research asks two linked questions. Why do some ARDS patients die, especially heavy drinkers? And what signals let damaged air sacs rebuild themselves? One project mines large clinical trial datasets to find causes and pathways of death. The other studies molecular signals in lung fluid that guide stem cell repair.
Why it matters
ARDS kills a large share of intensive care patients, and heavy drinkers fare worse. Identifying the leading causes of and pathways to death could help doctors target treatments and allocate care. It could also shape public health policy for people with alcohol-related risks. Exosomal proteins that support stem cell repair of injured air sacs may become drug targets that aid patients' lung recovery.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Maria Basil
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test whether Notch signaling, a cell-to-cell communication pathway, controls the identity of respiratory airway secretory cells (RASCs) and their ability to produce alveolar type 2 cells, using human embryonic stem cell models.
Seunghye Han
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a raised mitochondrial NADH/NAD+ ratio and the protein DELE1 are needed to activate the integrated stress response that blocks AT2-to-AT1 lung cell maturation when mitochondrial complex I is lost.
Timothy Blackwell
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Detect gene activity biomarkers of pre-clinical disease in asymptomatic relatives of familial pulmonary fibrosis patients, using single-cell RNA sequencing of blood immune cells such as CD14+ monocytes alongside high-resolution CT findings.
The school
Loyola University Chicago: 8 labs on PI Pages, $61M a year on research, 156 research doctorates a year.
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