Biomarker Discovery for Novel Drug Development in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

University of California, San Francisco110 enrolled

Overview

Drug discovery can take many years especially since most studies to measure effectiveness depend on clinical outcomes like pulmonary function tests and hospitalizations. This is an observational study designed to collect information, blood, and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid in people who have IPF and those who do not. The people who have IPF will be followed for 12 months to collect more biological samples and record clinically relevant information. The goal of this study is to identify new molecular markers that are measurable and reliable in people who have IPF. It is hoped that these markers can be used in future drug studies to significantly speed up the process of finding drugs that help.

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Enrollment

110

Conditions

Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF)

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 35 YearsMax age: 80 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * age 35 to 80 years * a diagnosis of IPF by consensus criteria Exclusion Criteria: * any condition that makes the patient at unacceptable risk for bronchoscopy * the presence of significant co-existing emphysema on HRCT * active cigarette smoking (defined as smoking within the last 6 months) * the presence of a significant co-morbidity felt to limit life expectancy to less than 12 months. * active listing for lung transplantation * inability to provide informed consent

Locations (1)

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Molecular Markers

We anticipate that we will successfully enroll 60 subjects with IPF in a 12 month longitudinal cohort study and provide biological samples (Bronchiolavage (BAL), alveolar macrophages, and blood) to Projects 1-3 for use in identifying mechanistically-informative markers of alveolar epithelial cell ER stress, αvβ6-mediated TGFβ activation, and EMT. We expect that levels of some of these mechanistic markers will be measurable in patient samples, and may be differentially present in IPF compared to normal controls. Variations in baseline levels of mechanistically-informative molecular markers may identify subgroups of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) patients that share distinct clinical phenotypes.

Time frame: 12 months