The Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine has been strongly focused on epidemiologic, basic and translational asthma research. Dr. Drazen and others have been largely responsible for the introduction of a new therapy, leukotriene inhibitors, for asthma. With the arrival of Dr. Shapiro, focus has broadened to include other important airway diseases, specifically COPD and OB post-lung transplantation. More importantly, the Division is now fundamentally equipped to perform basic cell and molecular biology, protein chemistry and genetic physiology. This combined effort with the work underway in the genetic epidemiology of asthma and COPD at the Channing Laboratory will allow the Division to make rapid and significant progress in understanding the pathogenesis of, and in creating effective therapies for these common diseases.
Other changes over the past five years include a significant increase in the number of faculty who perform basic bench research. Faculty with laboratory-based careers has increased to 14. Total research activity has increased by 177% over the last six years for which data are available. Current funding reflects funding for eleven investigators, as several junior faculty members are in their first or second year of faculty status and have yet to obtain NIH funding. An example of the bright future of the junior faculty is their success this year in obtaining competitive funding from the American Lung Association. This year, assisted by Dr. Shapiro, five of six applicants obtained funding (national average ~20%), and BWH faculty now possess five of the seven grants awarded in the Boston area.
The Division has participated in several important NIH-funded asthma activities, including the Asthma Clinical Research Network (year eight of ten) Asthma SCOR grant (the original Principal Investigator was Dr. Drazen).
The Lung Biology Center is newly formed to facilitate interdepartmental recruitment and collaboration. Pulmonary-specific cores have been initiated towards the goal of establishing program projects and SCOR grants to sustain thses efforts and promote interaction between BWH departments, Partners programs, and ultimately all members of the HMS community involved in lung biology.
Research Highlights
Basic Science
Translational Science
Clinical Research
Epidemiology
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