Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program - Meshell Darlene Johnson, M.D.

The Foundation's Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program was designed to provide four-year postdoctoral research awards to historically disadvantaged physicians who are committed to developing careers in academic medicine, to improving the health of underserved populations, and to furthering the understanding and elimination of health disparities. How the lung establishes and maintains homeostasis of airspace fluid is of major clinical importance. Pulmonary edema, an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the airspaces that impairs gas exchange, may occur in a variety of different pathologic states, including cardiac failure, trauma, sepsis, and pneumonia. The maintenance of lung fluid homeostasis is crucial to efficient alveolar gas exchange. The mechanisms that regulate ion and fluid clearance are incompletely understood. Much work has been done to elucidate the role of TII cells in alveolar fluid clearance. Because TI cells line more than 95 percent of the internal surface area of the lung, it seems appropriate to investigate the contributions that this cell type may make to ion and fluid transport in the alveoli. This grant provides support for this research.