Purpose of review: To discuss emerging technologies and their application to translation biology research in the field of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome and ventilator-induced lung injury.
Recent findings: Significant advances in the field of innovative therapeutics rely on our ability to identify and validate targets derived from biomedical breakthrough discoveries. The review considers recent studies that have creatively applied and integrated genomics, bioinformatics and/or proteomics to identifying novel candidate molecular targets. The focus is to present how innovative strategies have been exploited and combined with elegant translational biology experiments to advance the field of molecular acute respiratory distress syndrome/acute lung injury and ventilator-induced lung injury.
Summary: Renewed efforts to define the clinical phenotype have coincided with the availability of novel technology that has the potential to address critical molecular aspects of the syndrome. Convergence of these two approaches is expected to bring about a better understanding of acute lung injury and consequently further advances in treatment.