Approximately 50,000-190,000 adults and 24,000 newborn per year in the U.S. develop Acute- and Neonatal-Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS&NRDS), respectively. For more than a couple of decades, many researchers have been tackling the problem of how to investigate lung surfactant behavior, especially of the relationships between the lipids and the natural lung surfactant proteins, by using techniques such as the Langmuir-Trough or Pulsating Bubble Surfactometer (PBS). Currently, we are developing a new method of the micropipette manipulation technique for lung surfactant surface tension measurement. The technique builds on previous studies that used a simple tapered micropipet to measure liquid-gas and liquid-liquid interfacial tension [1-2]. Working with micropipettes that contain the aqueous phase but viewed in air allows us to measure interfacial tensions at controlled pressures and interfacial radii when lung surfactant material is introduced, as in delivery of liquids to the lung alveoli. The new measurements of calf lung surfactant, Infasurf, at the aqueous-air interface showed how the interfacial tension γ at 37 degree Celsius was rapidly reduced from 70.3 to 21.1 ± 0.1 mN/m. One of the advantages of this technique is that by using a second delivery pipette it can be used to observe kinetic processes like adsorption, condensation and desorption of interfacial materials. In order to provide a reversed cone shape for the delivery measurements, we modified the pipette shape to be trumpet-shaped. We will present more details at the meeting regarding lung surfactants and synthetic systems that have been studied.References[1–2] Lee, S., D. H. Kim, and D. Needham, Langmuir, 2001. 17: 5537 & 5544.
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