About Dr. Polverino
Francesca Polverino, MD, PhD, is endowed Lester and Sue Professor, and Associate Professor of Medicine, tenured, at the Baylor College of Medicine – Houston. Her clinical and research interest is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In 2010, after completing her medical degree and doctorate, she moved to the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where she studied the pathobiology and the systemic manifestations of COPD. Dr. Polverino published seminal papers focused on the mechanisms leading to the onset and progression of COPD. She discovered that patients with emphysema-predominant COPD have upregulated and off-targeted B cell responses with autoimmune features (AJRCCM 2010, 2015, 2019, 2023). She has also identified two molecules
that are expressed in the lung and are protective against cigarette smoke-induced lung damage and COPD: Club Cell Protein 16 (CC16, European Respiratory Journal 2015), and A-Disintegrin and A Metalloproteinase Domain 8 (AJRCCM 2018), and has described the first non-human primate model of COPD (American Journal of Pathology 2015). From a clinical standpoint, Dr. Polverino reported for the first time that patients with COPD also suffer extensive kidney damage (AJRCCM 2017) and that common drugs such as metformin can protect against the pulmonary damage observed in COPD (AJRCCM 2021). In the last few years, Dr. Polverino's laboratory has pioneered the use of digital spatial profiling for the study of lung pathologies (Cells 2022, Sci Rep 2023). Dr. Polverino’s research interest is also focused on the understanding of pre- and peri-natal factors that determine lung function limitation early in life (early COPD). In 2017, Dr. Polverino became an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, then joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in August 2018, where she led the COPD translational research group. She has been awarded several prestigious international recognitions, including the Parker B. Francis Fellowship (2016), the Rising Star of Research Award from the American Thoracic Society (2018), and the Medal of Honor for Scientific Merits from the President of Italian Republic, the European Respiratory Society COPD GOLD medal (2022), and the Parker B Francis award by the American Thoracic Society (2023). In January 2021, she has been recruited to the Baylor College of Medicine to lead an effort aimed at expanding the COPD translational research program within the college. Her team is now pioneering the integration of omic platforms (radiomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics) to dissect (early) COPD pathogenesis. In 2023, she became the ATS RCMB program committee chair and standing member of the NIH Lung Injury, Repair, and Remodeling (LIRR) Study Section.
About The Lab
The Polverino translational laboratory focuses on understanding the pathobiology underlying chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD is the third leading cause of death both in the USA and globally. The most common risk factor in developed countries is cigarette smoke, while in developing countries, the inhalation of smoke generated by burning biomass fuels indoors is an important risk factor. COPD has a multifactorial nature, being determined not only by environmental, but also genetic, genomic, and developmental factors, which accounts for an individual susceptibility to develop the disease. In the era of precision medicine, our ultimate goal is to understand key factors in the pathogenesis of COPD to be targeted in a selected subset of COPD patients. Our laboratory is also testing the efficacy of new therapeutics in pre-clinical animal models of these diseases.
What We Focus On
Identifying
The key molecular and cellular culprits in the pathogenesis of COPD
Discovering
Genetic and genomic factors which determine the individual susceptibility to develop COPD
Characterizing
The immune mechanisms underlying COPD
Correlating
Cellular and molecular readouts with COPD clinical phenotypes
Funding
The Polverino Laboratory is funded by the Baylor College of Medicine, Pulmonary Division seed funds, and NIH/NHLBI RO1-HL149744, VICTORY Houston donations, Boehringer Ingelheim unrestricted funds, and Lester and Sue Smith endowment funds.