Characterization of the Basal and mTOR-Dependent Acute Pulmonary and Systemic Immune Response in a Murine Model of Combined Burn and Inhalation Injury

Severe burn injury leads to a cascade of local and systemic immune responses that trigger an extreme state of immune dysfunction, leaving the patient highly susceptible to acute and chronic infection. When combined with inhalation injury, burn patients have higher mortality and a greater chance of developing secondary respiratory complications including infection. No animal model of combined burn and inhalation injury (B+I) exists that accurately mirrors the human clinical picture, nor are there any effective immunotherapies or predictive models of the risk of immune dysfunction. Our earlier work showed that the mechanistic/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is activated early after burn injury, and its chemical blockade at injury reduced subsequent chronic bacterial susceptibility. It is unclear if mTOR plays a role in the exacerbated immune dysfunction seen after B+I injury. We aimed to: (1) characterize a novel murine model of B+I injury, and (2) investigate the role of mTOR in the immune response after B+I injury. Pulmonary and systemic immune responses to B+I were characterized in the absence or presence of mTOR inhibition at the time of injury. Data describe a murine model of B+I with inhalation-specific immune phenotypes and implicate mTOR in the acute immune dysfunction observed.