Professor Yong-Cheol Lee and his team (Medical School, Department of Respiratory Allergy) have attracted attention by identifying a cause that plays a decisive role in the development of representative intractable conditions, acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

  These findings were published in Scientific Reports, the online journal published by Nature, one of the world's top scientific journals.

  Through animal experiments, the team demonstrated that endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, caused by overload of the endoplasmic reticulum—one of the intracellular organelles—is a major cause of the disease.

  In particular, they confirmed that proteins related to endoplasmic reticulum stress are markedly increased in blood samples taken from patients with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome who had been treated in intensive care units, compared with normal subjects. This suggests a new therapeutic target for intractable pulmonary injury disorders that previously lacked fundamental treatments.

  Professor Yong-Cheol Lee said, 'In the current situation where information on in vivo signaling pathways related to endoplasmic reticulum stress that cause acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome is very limited, these research results are highly significant,' and added, 'It is of great significance that we have elucidated the specific mechanism by which endoplasmic reticulum stress increases the expression of the NF-kB nuclear transcription factor and hypoxia-inducible factor, thereby contributing to disease onset.'

  Professor Lee, who serves as Professor and Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical School, has served as Research Director of the Korean Society of Asthma and Allergy and as Chair of the Invitation Committee for the Asia‑Pacific Respiratory Conference. He currently serves as a full member of the National Academy of Medicine of Korea, Director of External Cooperation for the Korean Tuberculosis and Respiratory Society, associate editor of society journals, and as an expert committee member of the National Research Foundation of Korea.

  He is also serving as director of the Ministry of Health and Welfare-designated Center for Therapeutic Development for Lung Injury and is conducting active research on intractable pulmonary diseases. Last year, he attracted attention when he was selected for the 'National Core Translational Research for Clinical Field Discovery' project.