The Washington University Program in Principles of Pulmonary Research provides multidisciplinary training for predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars committed to a career in pulmonary research. The postdoctoral portion of the Program enables MD and MD/PhD physicians who are training in pulmonary and critical care medicine to learn state-of-the-art scientific research in concert with PhD trainees from a basic science background. The predoctoral portion of the Program engages students in the M.D., Ph.D. and Ph.D. graduate division to work in close connection with the same pulmonary research curriculum. The proposal remains at seven postdoctoral and five predoctoral trainees with 2-3 years of support before transitioning to additional career development awards.
The aim of the Program is to promote the career development of trainees so they will enter academic pulmonary medicine with the skills needed to study problems relevant to lung biology and disease. The Program is closely monitored through a Director and four Committees (Diversity Recruitment, Program Review, Internal Advisory, and External Advisory) and relies on 32 senior mentors, 10 junior mentors, and 16 support faculty distributed into a coordinated set of three interdisciplinary research tracks, including two basic- translational tracks (Immunology-Host Defense and Epithelial Cell-Matrix Biology) and one clinical-translational track (for further application to human disease). The basic tracks are designed to correspond to the major themes of the pulmonary research program and to coincide with the graduate training program, and the clinical track is aimed at extending these fields to human subject research and the Clinical Research Training Center curriculum. This program structure allows for a broad-based faculty from 12 departments to coordinate and focus research activities and trainee supervision in a multidisciplinary, collaborative, and synergistic process. For all trainee activities within this structure, there is also a carefully constructed mentoring process that includes benchmarks for individual trainee presentation, publication, and grant application. To achieve these goals, all predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees engage in the same research review process that is home- based around a joint Pulmonary Research Conference. This Conference is the hub for input from an overall Program Review Committee (that includes the Program Director and his advisors) and a project-specific Advisory Committee (that includes the trainee's mentors, co-mentors, and collaborators). Trainees also receive input via individual lab and group meetings as well as additional research conferences that are set up to coordinate with the research themes of the Program. The research-intense experience is supplemented through graduate coursework to build general skills and specific knowledge of a research field. In addition, there are mechanisms for mentors and trainees to achieve success in mentoring and diversity attributes of the program. Together, these mechanisms serve to ensure high-level multidisciplinary trainee experiences and performance in previous and present cycles of this longstanding and highly successful Program.

Public Health Relevance

Respiratory disease represents a major health care problem. Indeed, chronic lower respiratory (lung) disease is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. population. The purpose of our pulmonary research training program is to develop new leaders and innovators to drive research and development in the field of lung biology and disease and thereby solve this problem.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Type
Institutional National Research Service Award (T32)
Project #
5T32HL007317-43
Application #
9983779
Study Section
NHLBI Institutional Training Mechanism Review Committee (NITM)
Program Officer
Kalantari, Roya
Project Start
1978-07-01
Project End
2023-07-31
Budget Start
2020-08-01
Budget End
2021-07-31
Support Year
43
Fiscal Year
2020
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Washington University
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
068552207
City
Saint Louis
State
MO
Country
United States
Zip Code
63130
Kulkarni, Hrishikesh S; Liszewski, M Kathryn; Brody, Steven L et al. (2018) The complement system in the airway epithelium: An overlooked host defense mechanism and therapeutic target? J Allergy Clin Immunol 141:1582-1586.e1
Howard, Nicole C; Marin, Nancy D; Ahmed, Mushtaq et al. (2018) Mycobacterium tuberculosis carrying a rifampicin drug resistance mutation reprograms macrophage metabolism through cell wall lipid changes. Nat Microbiol 3:1099-1108
Oltean, Alina; Schaffer, Andrew J; Bayly, Philip V et al. (2018) Quantifying Ciliary Dynamics during Assembly Reveals Stepwise Waveform Maturation in Airway Cells. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol 59:511-522
Monin, Leticia; Mehta, Shail; Elsegeiny, Waleed et al. (2018) Aspergillus fumigatus Preexposure Worsens Pathology and Improves Control of Mycobacterium abscessus Pulmonary Infection in Mice. Infect Immun 86:
Gregory, Ann C; Sullivan, Matthew B; Segal, Leopoldo N et al. (2018) Smoking is associated with quantifiable differences in the human lung DNA virome and metabolome. Respir Res 19:174
Berry, Kayla N; Kober, Daniel L; Su, Alvin et al. (2018) Limiting Respiratory Viral Infection by Targeting Antiviral and Immunological Functions of BST-2/Tetherin: Knowledge and Gaps. Bioessays 40:e1800086
Lyons, Patrick G; Edelson, Dana P; Churpek, Matthew M (2018) Rapid response systems. Resuscitation 128:191-197
Koo, Hyun Young; El-Baz, Lamis Mf; House, StaceyL et al. (2018) Fibroblast growth factor 2 decreases bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis and inhibits fibroblast collagen production and myofibroblast differentiation. J Pathol 246:54-66
Kulkarni, Hrishikesh S; Witt, Chad A (2018) Voriconazole in lung transplant recipients - how worried should we be? Am J Transplant 18:5-6
Dunlap, Micah D; Howard, Nicole; Das, Shibali et al. (2018) A novel role for C-C motif chemokine receptor 2 during infection with hypervirulent Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mucosal Immunol 11:1727-1742

Showing the most recent 10 out of 135 publications