Wayne

Mitzner

,

PhD

Brief description of current research activities:
My research interests are focused on the structural basis of physiologic lung function and how this normal structure manifests itself in pathologic situations and environmental exposures.   Current work is concerned with understanding the mechanisms that underlie the chronic lung tissue destruction that occurs in emphysema.  These functional and immunological studies in the mouse are directed toward investigating mechanisms of alveolar destruction with age or with emphysematous lesions.  How this tissue destruction impacts the interaction between the lung parenchyma and airways plays a key role in the ability to breath in this pathology, and ongoing work is involved in studying this interaction.  Additional funded work involves evaluating methods of impairing the ability of airway smooth muscle to shorten, as a possible treatment of asthma.  The approach, termed bronchial thermoplasty, has direct clinical implications for the most severe asthmatic subjects.   I also have a keen interest in understanding and developing methods to properly phenotype pulmonary function in the mouse, which is the most common experimental animal model of most human diseases.  I’ve chaired several minisymposia and postgraduate courses in this area of mouse phenotyping.