Dr. Steven ldell is a clinical investigator who has been continually funded over the past 30 years by the National Institutes of Health for his work in the areas of acute lung injury and pleural diseases. He is a board-certified internist and pulmonologist who has also directed the Intensive Care Units at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and The University of Texas Health Science Center in Tyler, Texas. He is now Vice President for Research, a Professor of Medicine and Temple Chair of Pulmonary Fibrosis at UTHSCT, and was Director of an NIH-sponsored Program Project Grant to study the role of the fibrinolytic system in the pathogenesis of lung and pleural disease. Work from that project led to the development of scuPA as a treatment for pleural loculation and of a peptide-based approach for treating acute lung injury and pulmonary fibrosis.