News & Spotlights

Jerome S. Brody, MD

Our Pulmonary Center community is heartbroken by the loss of Jerry Brody, who passed away peacefully on January 22, 2023, at his home in Boston while surrounded by family, after a brave battle against Alzheimer's disease. He was 88 years old. Jerry meant so much to us here at BU and... More

CRISPR interference interrogation of COPD GWAS genes

This project developed to address limitations in our understanding of the genetic factors that predispose a subset of individuals exposed to environmental injury to develop COPD, a major contributor to morbidity and mortality worldwide. While genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have now identified 82 variants across the genome as significantly associated... More

A Multimodal iPSC Platform for Cystic Fibrosis Drug Testing

In 2022, the major challenge in cystic fibrosis is developing treatments for individuals who do not respond to highly effective modulator therapy. These individuals have mutations that lead to no residual CFTR protein. In vitro models have a proven track record in developing effective treatments for CF patients however access... More

New R01: Biology of Lymphangiogenesis in the Adult Lung

In June, we were delighted to learn that our new R01 entitled Biology of Lymphangiogenesis in the Adult Lung was funded. This work builds upon exciting data generated by Senegal Carty (PiBS graduate student) and Erin Crossey MD, PhD (pulmonary fellow; Figure 1) demonstrating that robust lymphangiogenesis (Figure 2) and... More

Junior Faculty Foundation Awards

Joseph Kaserman, MD Assistant Professor My award is from the Alpha-1 Foundation and is a 2-year Research Grant award from the foundation. The Title of the proposal is “Mechanisms of Hepatic Heterogeneity and ATF6 Mediated Metabolic Dysfunction in AATD.” In this proposal we are investigating mechanisms that could be contributing to the... More

New RO1 grant awarded to Giovanni Ligresti

Dr. Ligresti has been awarded an NIH/NHLBI RO1 grant ($2.8M) to study the role of the pulmonary vasculature in the pathogenesis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is a progressive and fatal disease of aging that causes scar tissue to build up in the lung, leading to respiratory failure. Although... More

Winner of the First Annual Kayla Bell Citizenship Award

  In the spirit of Kayla’s thoughtful and eager generosity, we have established a Kayla Bell Pulmonary Center Citizenship Award. This award will be an occasion to celebrate and commemorate the time that Kayla shared with us, bestowed annually to a member of the Pulmonary Center who most embodies Kayla’s kind... More

New model reveals early steps in ILD

            Pulmonary fibrosis involves relentless progressive scarring of the lung. Its poorly understood pathogenesis, due in part to a paucity of productive disease models, hampers clinical advancement for interstitial lung disease (ILD). Assistant Professor Kontantinos Alysandratos and Professor Darrell Kotton have made a major advance in this arena by recapitulating early events in ILD. More

Lung epithelial cells instruct T cells and adaptive immunity

Lung immunity is essential to combat all pulmonary diseases, including COVID-19, pneumonia, lung cancer, asthma and COPD. Lung immunity differs from the systemic immunity which is the normal focus of biomedical investigations and interventions, but factors influencing the establishment and regulation of lung immunity are mostly still unknown. Jay Mizgerd's... More

Recent Awards for Pulmonary Fellows

Congratulations to these Pulmonary Center trainees who were recently successful in receiving extramural training awards: (Featured left to right) Eduardo Nunez, MD Fourth Year Fellow Mentor: Renda Wiener NIH NCI F32 - Determining organizational structures and processes that improve lung cancer screening adherence among underserved populations, effective 9/15/21 LUNGevity Foundation Health Equity and Inclusiveness Research Fellow... More