Asthma

Dr Tara Carr is a board certified Allergist/Immunologist physician with subspecialty training and experience in the evaluation and treatment of allergic and immunologic diseases in both children and adults. She is focused on studying the impact of environmental exposures on development and heterogeneity of allergic disease, with an emphasis on asthma. She has significant clinical research experience in pediatric and adult allergic disease and asthma within the Asthma & Airway Disease Research Center at the University of Arizona. She has led multiple industry trials at the research center as primary investigator, in areas of severe asthma, nasal polyps, and food allergy. She has also been a sub-investigator within three large NHLBI-funded clinical research networks in asthma (PrecISE, AsthmaNet, American Lung Association-Airway Clinical Research Centers), and served as a clinical core co-director for the Dysfunction of Innate Immunity in Asthma U19 program. Her roles include leadership of the research team, recruitment of participants, and oversight of procedures and adverse reactions among those participants. At Bio5, Dr Carr leads the immunology and genetics laboratory responsible for receiving all samples collected as part of these studies, processing those samples for future use, biobanking those samples in a longitudinal repository, and running various experiments on those samples as necessary for the planned study. A sub-investigator in the Tucson Children’s Respiratory Study, Dr Carr is contributing to longstanding efforts toward understanding early life risk factors of lung disease by leading metabolic, allergic, and immunologic analyses of longitudinally collected samples. As co-investigator for the Binational Early Asthma and Microbiome Study, Dr Carr leads the scientific effort to collect, transport, and store human and environmental samples from Nogales Mexico and Tucson. Dr Carr is responsible for describing the immunology of pregnant women and the immunological development of their babies, with a goal of understanding which maternal and environmental factors influence allergic (asthma-prone) and non-allergic immune development.
To this end, Dr Carr’s lab utilizes a broad range of experimental methods- often in collaboration with other Bio5 researchers- to describe the biological characteristics of asthma and allergic disease, including DNA and RNA sequencing, protein measurement by ELISA, Immulite and Luminex, culture and stimulation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells with cellular phenotyping, and metabolomics.

Dr. Fernando D. Martinez is a Regents’ Professor and Director of the Asthma & Airway Disease Research Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Martinez is a world-renowned expert, and one of the most highly regarded researchers, in the field of childhood asthma. His primary research interests are the natural history, genetics, and treatment of childhood asthma. His groundbreaking research has had an impact on his field in numerous ways, most prominent among them the development of the concept of the early origins of asthma and COPD. This concept is now widely accepted as the potential basis for the design of new strategies for the prevention of these devastating illnesses affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. In addition, Dr. Martinez has made important contributions to our understanding of the role of gene-environment interactions in the development of asthma and allergies. He has also been the principal investigator of one of the Clinical Centers that are part of the NHLBI Asthma Treatment Networks, which have contributed fundamental new evidence on which to base national guidelines for the treatment of the disease. Dr. Martinez currently serves on national scientific boards including the NHLBI National Advisory Council and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. He was a member of the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program that was responsible for the development of the Expert Panel Report: Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma in 1997 and its first revision in 2001. He also has been a member of the FDA Pulmonary-Allergy Drugs Advisory Committee and the Board of Extramural Advisors of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Dr. Martinez’s research and vision are well detailed in more than 250 original research papers and editorials, many in collaboration with investigators from all over the world. He is frequently invited to give keynote presentations at national and international meetings.

Stefano Guerra, MD, PhD, is a professor of Medicine, the Director of the Population Science Unit at the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center, and a leading expert in the natural history and biomarkers of obstructive lung diseases, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). As principal investigator, he is engaged in the leadership and coordination of multiple studies that use bio-specimens and phenotypic information from independent epidemiological cohorts to characterize the natural history, profile the risk factors, and identify novel biomarkers of lung diseases.

Yin Chen, PhD. is an Assistant Professor in Pharmacology and Toxicology in the College of Pharmacy at UA. Dr. Chen’s research focus is on epithelial biology. He was a research faculty in University of California, Davis and an Assistant Investigator in Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (former CIIT and later Hamner Institute). His long-term research objective is to understand the dysfunction of airway epithelial mucosa in the pathogenesis of a variety of acute and chronic airway diseases. His current research programs are: a) understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying airway mucous cell development and mucous cell metaplasia in chronic diseases including cancer, COPD and asthma; (b) understanding the function and regulation of novel COPD associated genes and developing novel compounds to treat COPD; (c) understanding the impact of fungal exposure on airway innate immunity and its contribution to the development and exacerbation of asthma. Dr. Chen has more than 30 publications including peer-reviewed research articles, reviews and book chapters. He has served as the PI on one R01, two R21, one Flight Attendant Medical Institute (FAMRI) Innovative Clinical Award and one Arizona Biomedical Research Commission Award. He has also served as co-PI on two R01 and one P01 grants. He has built a long productive track record in studying airway mucus production and respiratory viral infection using primary airway epithelial cell model. He routinely cultivate and use primary epithelial cells from eye, salivary gland, airway surface and submucosal gland in different species (e.g. human, monkey, pig, rat and mouse) as our in vitro model to study mucin genes. The differentiated primary culture model demonstrates pseudostratified morphology, is composed of ciliated, non-ciliated, and goblet cells, and has a transepithelial barrier with high electro-resistance. He has also established in vivo exposure system to study the pulmonary effect of the exposure to particulates, pathogens and gases. Using this system, he has developed various airway disease models including CS-induced COPD model, ovalbumin-induced asthma model, fungal-induced asthma model and several infection models such as H1N1, rhinovirus, Aspergillus, and Alternaria.