PhD Candidate Kiloni Quiles-Franco Featured in Podcast Interview
Kiloni Quiles-Franco is a PhD candidate in the labs of Felicia Chen MD in the Pulmonary Center and Evan Johnson PhD in the Division of Computational Biomedicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Kiloni is engaged in a number of on- and off-campus initiatives focused on equity and inclusion, such as the Women’s Professional Development […]
New ways to attack necrotic tuberculous granulomas in the lung
Approximately one quarter of all humans have been infected during their lifetime with Mycobacterium tuberculosis – the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB). Most of the infected people control the bacteria that remain dormant for many years. In some individuals, however, the bacteria grow in the lungs, causing severe lung damage, including the formation of necrosis […]
Dr. O’Connor and the New Asthma Guidelines
George O’Connor, MD, MS, a Pulmonary Center faculty member and associate editor of JAMA, and Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, MD, MS from Columbia University, wrote an editorial (1) in the December 8, 2020 issue of JAMA on a new update to the NIH asthma guidelines (2) that was also published in that issue of JAMA. Drs. O’Connor […]
Actionable Lung Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Infection
Teams from Pulmonary Center Faculty members Andrew Wilson and Darrell Kotton (and collaborators) recently published exciting new findings about how alveolar epithelial type 2 cells respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection! “Briefly, we found that there are changes to cellular proteins (the proteome and phosphoproteome) that occur as soon as 1 hour […]
COVID-19 study spanning 275 hospitals and 23 countries
Dr. Walkey is co-Principal Investigator for the Society of Critical Care Medicine Discovery Viral Infection and Respiratory Illness Universal Study. This study, funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, created an international registry that supplies de-identified clinical data from more than 40,000 patients at 275 hospitals in 23 countries for the conduct […]
Past infections with other coronaviruses influence COVID-19
Endemic coronaviruses have been causing human infections for many years, long before the recent emergence of SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19. Jay Mizgerd and Manish Sagar (from the Section of Infectious Diseases) hypothesized that infections with endemic coronavirus, which are molecularly similar to SARS-CoV-2, might elicit cross-reactive immunity that influences what happens during a SARS-CoV-2 infection. […]
Faculty Promotions
We are very proud to announce that in the past few months we’ve had several Faculty Promotions! These individuals have proved themselves as dedicated scientists, mentors, and colleagues, and because of this, they have all been promoted from Associate Professors to the rank of Professor. Congratulations to our esteemed faculty! Renda S. Wiener MD, […]
Collaborative paper (Pulmonary Center, CReM, and NEIDL) on novel model for SARS-CoV-2 infection
SARS-CoV-2 Infection of Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Human Lung Alveolar Type 2 Cells Elicits a Rapid Epithelial-Intrinsic Inflammatory Response A hallmark of severe COVID-19 pneumonia is SARS-CoV-2 infection of the facultative progenitors of lung alveoli, the alveolar epithelial type 2 cells (AT2s). However, inability to access these cells from patients, particularly at early stages of disease, […]
Jacob and Kotton Publish Tools for Making Lung Epithelial Cells
Jacob, Kotton, and colleagues have developed a method for producing self-renewing lung alveolar epithelial cells from any patient. Their protocol, published in the December 2019 issue of Nature Protocols follows on their recent Cell Stem Cell publication (Jacob et al. Cell Stem Cell, 2017) where the team was able to reprogram patient blood specimens […]
Trainee Successes in Securing Funding
Several Pulmonary Center trainees got great news from the NIH on recent grant applications, including: Pulmonary Fellow Nicholas Bosch, M.D. Nick will be receiving an F32 award from the NIGMS titled “Normalizing vasopressor dose to standardize vasopressors practice in septic shock.” This award will allow him, under the mentorship of Dr. Allan Walkey, to 1) […]