Helena Lund-Palau is a PhD student at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London. She graduated in Medicine in 2016 from UPF-UAB. In October 2016, she started a PhD under the supervision of Professor Uta Griesenbach and Professor Eric Alton. Her current project focusses on the pulmonary disease pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP). 

In particular, how a w a pseudotyped lentivirus, which has been approved for the first-in-man clinical trial for cystic fibrosis, can ameliorate PAP in a murine model. In addition, data from an ex vivo human model shows that the same lentivirus can induce the secretion of a therapeutic protein for a long period of time. These are pretty encouraging results, which could lead in the future, to novel therapies for PAP disease. In fact, when Helena presented some of her results at the British Thoracic Society (BTS) Winter meeting 2018 she was awarded an Early Career Investigator Prize,  given by the BTS, the British Association for Lung Research and the British Lung Foundation. "Ihope this encourages current studies to follow their dreams because there are many possibilities out there to contribute to the progression of the Medical field!", she states.