The lung has a unique relationship with the environment. Through evolution the lung has developed strategies to defend itself from microbial invasion. As we encounter increasing multidrug-resistant microorganisms, we need to further our knowledge of innate defense systems in order to design novel strategies to deal with these microbes without inducing over-exuberant inflammation and lung injury.
Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1922, USA. rstrieter@mednet.ucla.edu
