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Interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) are debilitating disorders that cause patients to slowly lose their lung function, resulting in shortness of breath, limited capacity for movement and, subsequently, death. Over 4,000 British Columbians currently suffer from ILD, yet not all of them receive proper therapy, partly due to difficulties in identifying the precise ILD subtype.

A correct diagnosis is crucial to administering proper therapy. Yet, nearly half of ILD patients report a delay in diagnosis of more than one year, which hinders optimal disease management and increases the risk of death. Moreover, drug treatment for Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a subtype of ILD, costs ~$40k/year, whereas other ILD subtypes generally respond well to alternative medications that are ~90% cheaper.  Therefore, early and accurate diagnosis of ILD is critical to ensuring patients receive the right therapy and can provide significant cost savings for the healthcare system.

To address the need for better ILD diagnosis, this project aims to identify diagnostic cellular markers that can accurately distinguish between subtypes of ILD. To date, the project team has completed analysis for 32 ILD blood samples and identified ILD subtype-specific cell types and genes that have biomarker potentials with both biological and clinical relevance. Further analysis for a complete data set is underway and will be used to set up a multi-centre study to validate the clinical utility  of the identified biomarkers, TMEM176B.