Potential use of fluorocarbons in lung surfactant therapy.

Exogenous surfactant therapy based on animal lung extract preparations has been developed successfully for the treatment of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. However, because of the inherent limitations of these natural preparations, the development of new synthetic surfactants is a major objective. We report here that a perfluorocarbon gas (perfluorooctyl bromide, gPFOB) inhibits the formation of the semi-crystalline domains that occur during compression of a Langmuir monolayer of dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DPPC), taken as a simplified model of lung surfactant. gPFOB also facilitates the re-spreading of the DPPC monolayer. These results suggest that PFOB, a fluorocarbon already investigated for oxygen delivery, may be useful in lung surfactant replacement compositions.