Learning from the Cardiologists and Developing Eluting Stents Targeting the Mtor Pathway for Pulmonary Application; A Future Concept for Tracheal Stenosis

Tracheal stenosis due to either benign or malignant disease is a situation that the pulmonary physicians and thoracic surgeons have to cope in their everyday clinical practice. In the case where tracheal stenosis is caused due to malignancy mini-interventional interventions with laser, apc, cryoprobe, balloon dilation or with combination of more than one equipment and technique can be used. On the other hand, in the case of a benign disease such as; tracheomalacia the clinician can immediately upon diagnosis proceed to the stent placement. In both situations however; it has been observed that the stents induce formation of granuloma tissue in both or one end of the stent. Therefore a frequent evaluation of the patient is necessary, taking also into account the nature of the primary disease. Evaluation methodologies identifying different types and extent of the trachea stenosis have been previously published. However; we still do not have an effective adjuvant therapy to prevent granuloma tissue formation or prolong already treated granuloma lesions. There have been proposed many mechanisms which induce the abnormal growth of the local tissue, such as; local pressure, local stress, inflammation and vascular endothelial growth factor overexpression. Immunomodulatory agents inhibiting the mTOR pathway are capable of inhibiting the inflammatory cascade locally. In the current mini-review we will try to present the current knowledge of drug eluting stents inhibiting the mTOR pathway and propose a future application of these stents as a local anti-proliferative treatment.