 Our next presenter is Dian Nelson, whose presentation title is Drug Delivery to the Lungs Using Parfluorocarbon Emulsions. A deep breath. The main function of the lung to bring air in deep enough such that it reaches the tiny air sacs or alveoli where the oxygen exchange happens. Inhale drug delivery, the golden standard for delivering drugs to the lungs, capitalizes on this basic function. The drug goes where the air goes. This makes sense, right? But what happens when you have diseased dysfunctional lungs? The problem? There are many lung diseases like acute lung injury or cystic fibrosis where the lungs are filled with inflammatory fluids or infected mucus. This decreases air flow and thus the drug delivery to these diseased regions. So how do you deliver drugs? You can't use the golden standard. What we decided was to fight fluid with fluid. Our proposed concept is to deliver drugs to the lungs by filling the lungs with another liquid called liquid perfluorocarbon. This delivery method is independent of air flow so that you can get a uniform distribution of the drugs in the diseased regions where it's needed the most. Now I know what you're thinking. Fluid in the lungs means drowning. But perfluorocarbons have a high oxygen solubility. So you can first saturate the perfluorocarbon with oxygen and then put it into the patient's lungs. This is what is done clinically in hospitals and patients do not drown. In addition perfluorocarbons have a very high surface tension so they can easily penetrate those clogged regions and actually reach the damaged areas. The only downside is that water and thus the drugs that we typically would use cannot be dissolved in perfluorocarbon liquids. So how do we create a uniform delivery method? We first dissolve the drugs in the water and then emulsify that water in the perfluorocarbon liquids using a fluorosurfactant emulsifier. This creates an emulsion with a very dispersed phase of tiny water droplets. We can change this emulsion formulation by changing the water content. This is the amount of water that's in the emulsion as well as the drug content. That's the amount of drug that's in the water that's in the emulsion. My research specifically deals with infected mucus which is what's seen in cystic fibrosis patients. And my goal is to find an emulsion formulation that maximizes bacterial killing. So I iteratively test my emulsions on a benchtop design of infected lung tissue as well as in live animals with the lung infection. And I believe that perfluorocarbon drug delivery is a great method to help patients breathe easier. Thank you.