Bailey Cardwell
PhD student, Immunology
Supervisors, Professor Ben Marsland, Associate Professor Glen Westall.
What I’m Working On: A Flash, A Fire, An Extinguisher - Decoding Lung Fibrosis
The average person takes 22,000 breaths per day. Each breath brings in vital oxygen to fuel our bodies — but potentially also pollution, smoke, chemicals, and infections.
In most people, the lungs can handle these insults. Damage triggers an initial fire that is quickly extinguished, allowing the lungs to return to normal — continuing to breathe like a lush forest.
However, in people with chronic lung fibrosis, these fires never die. Their lungs have lost the ability to extinguish and heal. What begins as a small flash in one corner slowly spreads throughout the lung like a fire, permanently destroying lung tissue and ultimately leading to organ failure. Sadly, there is currently no cure.
In the lungs of these patients are three regions: healthy areas resembling a forest, areas of active fibrosis like a wildfire, and functionally dead tissue — the aftermath of the blaze.
My PhD addresses two main aims. One, why,and two, how fibrosis spreads. To investigate this, I have collected lung tissue samples representing these three disease stages.
From these samples, I have extracted molecules — the nutrients, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates — and isolated individual cells present to profile what genes have been switched on and off. I have then integrated this information using a mathematical model to decode and define a unique “fingerprint” of each disease stage.
With these fingerprints, I first turn to understand the why. Cells respond to the molecules surrounding them. By decoding the molecule layer of each fingerprint, I have identified what is unique to the stage of active burning fibrosis, the signals driving disease. This addresses the first aim of why fibrosis spreads.
The how: I look at the cell layer, identifying which cells are present at each stage and what genes they’ve switched on or off in response to their environment. This revealed how cells behave differently across stages and how they contribute to the spread of fibrosis, addressing the second aim.
I then combine the knowledge of why and how together, to extract out and pinpoint the holistic combination of molecules, cells, and genes that drive fibrosis, thus discovering new ways to halt it.
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*This story is based on Bailey’s 2025 Three-Minute Thesis presentation.