"An ideal replacement formulation would be a mixture of synthetic lipids, in a ratio based on a good understanding of their individual functions in lung surfactant, combined with simple peptide sequences which capture the full activity of the native lung surfactant mixture," said Zasadzinski.
"Such a mixture could be easily and cheaply produced without any batch to batch variance," he said. "The composition could be tailored to optimize the properties of the mixture for the treatment of specific cases."
Surfactant replacement therapy has been shown to reduce mortality rates by 30 to 50 percent for infants with neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. And, 80 percent of the decline in the infant mortality rate in the United States between 1989 and 1990 (the year in which surfactant therapy was introduced) could be attributed to surfactant therapy, according to the researchers.
While lung surfactant replacement therapy has been of great help, it needs improvement in order to treat infants more effectively, in a more refined way, and to begin to address adult respiratory distress syndrome, they explained.
Adult respiratory distress syndrome is a broad class of lung disease that can be related to: trauma, smoking, long term chronic obstructed lung disease, pneumonia, the hanta virus, near drowning, and other unknown causes.
When neonatal respiratory distress occurs, insufficient surfactant results in a progressive failure of the lungs, manifested clinically by