About the Project
The acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis are leading causes of death in critically ill patients, yet both are clinical syndromes defined by non-specific signs and symptoms which encompass major clinical and biological heterogeneity. Pre-clinical studies have identified numerous promising therapeutic agents for both ARDS and sepsis, but clinical trials of these agents (with a handful of exceptions, mainly in COVID-19) have been relentlessly negative, in large part due to this aforementioned heterogeneity. The Calfee Lab has identified two molecular phenotypes within ARDS and sepsis, with consistent reproducibility across numerous studies, widely divergent clinical outcomes, and differential responses to therapy. Patients with ARDS and/or sepsis will be classified into the hyper- or hypoinflammatory phenotypes using our validated biomarker-based classifier model, applied to data from cohort enrollment. Subsequent assays will query differences in immunophenotype and metagenomic profile between phenotypes. We plan to apply these approaches in both blood/plasma specimens and tracheal aspirate when feasible, to compare the biologic response in each compartment.
