News & Spotlights
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, More
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... More
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 after... More
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... More
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... More
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... More
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... More
New Publication from Bosmann Lab
Bacterial polyphosphates interfere with the innate host defense to infection Polyphosphates are linear polymers of inorganic phosphate residues that are ubiquitous in living organisms. The recent publication from Dr. Bosmann and colleagues in Nature Communications highlights that long polyphosphates from bacteria are mediators of death in sepsis. Bacterial polyphosphates interfere with... More
Pulmonary Center Blog
What makes you smile? Lindsey Stein Administrative Assistant/ Blog Editor 5/1/2020 Mrs. Hughes (aka Katie Steiling) A Splash of Sunshine Joe and I planned to get married in a small ceremony in Boston Public Garden on August 15th. More recently we decided: why wait. We were married on Tuesday, April 28th on the front steps of... More
Celebrating Dr. Jerry Brody
This year, we kick off fund-raising efforts for the Jerry Brody Endowment. The largest and most significant endowment for the Pulmonary Center will be named for Dr. Brody, who helped establish the Pulmonary Center at BUSM, was its longest serving Director, and built it into the world-leading research and training... More