Abstract
Although injury to the alveolar epithelial barrier is thought to be of central importance in the pathogenesis of acute lung injury, at the present time (to our knowledge), there are no established biochemical markers for alveolar epithelial injury in human disease. We hypothesized that cell-specific alveolar epithelial apical plasma membrane proteins might be useful biochemical markers for lung injury. This hypothesis has been validated in various models of rodent lung injury, in which the airspace liquid content of RT140, a rat type I cell integral membrane protein, correlated directly with the extent of epithelial injury assessed by morphologic criteria (Am J Physiol 1995; 268:L181–186, and 1997; 272:L631–638).
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