Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Clinical Research

COPD is a long-term lung disease which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. It is usually caused by smoking, and symptoms of COPD include shortness of breath, increased mucus production and coughing. Excessive mucus production causes plugging of the airways. The inflammation in the airways of patients with COPD leads to the destruction of tissue in the lungs as the air sacs lose their shape and elasticity. Current projects in the Cardiorespiratory Research Laboratory include evaluating the effects of current and investigational treatments on lung function and exercise capacity of patients with COPD.

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Asthma Clinical Research

Asthma is a pulmonary disease characterized by airway obstruction, airway inflammation and increased airway responsiveness to a variety of stimuli, including environmental allergens. Symptoms of asthma include chest tightness and cough, bronchoconstriction, muscus hypersecretion. Many inflammatory cells are implicated in the pathology that characterizes asthma, including eosinophils, basophils, mast cells, neutrophils and T cells which are all shown to infiltrate the bronchial tissue of patients with asthma.Current projects are aimed at determining the critical pathways leading to inflammation and tissue damage that occurs in asthma, which are crucial for the identification of new therapeutic targets for control of asthma. As part of the Clinical Investigator’s Consortium of the AllerGen network, we evaluate efficacy of experimental drugs thought to regulate the complex processes involved in the mechanisms of allergic asthma.

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Airway Inflammation Research

Understanding the pathology of pulmonary lung disease at the cellular and molecular level leads to the increased potential for the development of novel agents which can be used to effectively target those underlying mechanisms. In the Cardiorespiratory Research Laboratory, we actively study immune cells from donors with asthma, COPD or normal controls to better understand immune (dys)regulation of lung disease. Application of assays including ELISA, western blotting, Q-PCR, colony-formation, flow cytometry are used to evaluate responses of immune cells to stimuli and therapeutic intervention.

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