Pulmonary Fibrosis to be Studied with $11M Federal Grant

Friends and relatives:

I thought you'd be interested in reading the news story I've reprinted below from the Boston Business Journal. The Boston University School of Medicine researchers winning this grant are the same wonderful doctors that treated Laura for her pulmonary fibrosis, the focus of the research the grant will fund. These doctors include Boston Medical Center and BUSM pulmonologists Karin A. Sloan and Harrison W. (Hap) Farber. Let's hope this grant helps find a cause and cure for pulmonary fibrosis and for other COPD situations.

Please note this statistic from the news story - "The incidence of pulmonary fibrosis has doubled over the past decade and now kills about 40,000 Americans each year." To put that into perspective, it may interest you to know that about the same number of women die each year from breast cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, the number of women who will have died from a diagnosis of breast cancer this year is an estimated 40,170.

The lung disease research grant is being made as part of President Obama's 2009 stimulus program. I, for one, am extremely grateful, and I know that Laura was and would continue to be proud of her wonderful medical team.

Best,

Burt Peretsky peretsky@verizon.net
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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Lung-disease researchers land $11M
Boston Business Journal - by Julie M. Donnelly

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has awarded Boston University School of Medicine and four other institutions an $11 million, two-year grant. It’s part of the federal stimulus program for the National Institutes of Health.

This grant will allow scientists to study the biology of two fatal lung diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pulmonary fibrosis.

The grant recipients are all part of the Multi-Center Lung Genomics Research Consortium, which consists of BUSM, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute National Jewish Health, University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

They will use advanced genetic and molecular tools to characterize and better understand COPD and pulmonary fibrosis. They’ll share what they learn with researchers worldwide through a web-based data warehouse.

The goal is to identify who is at risk for the diseases, so they can be diagnosed sooner and treated with personalized therapies.

Researchers will use tissue samples from the NHLBI Lung Tissue Research Consortium biorepository for their studies. The biorepository now contains almost 1,300 tissue samples and collects about 250 additional samples per year from patients with chronic lung diseases.

COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. The incidence of pulmonary fibrosis has doubled over the past decade and now kills about 40,000 Americans each year. There are few effective treatments for either disease and both diseases are fatal.

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