News and Announcements
Good news: James M. Walter, MD has won the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors (APCCMPD) Award for Novel Fellowship Education Implementation. Dr. Walter is Associate Program Director for Critical Care Experiences in the Pulmonary Disease & Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program at Northwestern. He will have the opportunity to present his and his team's work at the APCCMPD Annual Conference in March 2025. Please join us in offering our congratulations on this well-deserved honor, as well as our thanks to Dr. Walter for all his work and leadership on this project.
In new research led by Karen M. Ridge, PhD, and Ruihua Ma, PhD, the intermediate filament protein vimentin has been shown to modulate receptor-ligand interactions in regulatory T cells by sequestering receptors at the distal pole complex, an intracellular structure that forms opposite the immunological synapse in T cells. As a result, the inflammation-suppressing and tissue-repairing functions of regulatory T cells are inhibited, leading to impaired recovery from influenza. This work has been published in Cell Reports.
We are proud to announce that SQLIFTS members Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD, Mark C. Hersam, PhD, and Richard G. Wunderink, MD have been named to the 2024 Highly Cited Researchers list published by Clarivate Analytics. It is a testament to the impact of our work that three of the ten Feinberg investigators who received this recognition are part of SQLIFTS. See the announcement in this article. Congratulations!
Cholesterol for the lung? Researchers at Northwestern led by Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS have developed an experimental blood test to detect a proteomic signature that identifies adults at high risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or other severe respiratory conditions, just as heart disease risk is currently assessed by measuring cholesterol levels. Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and announced in a National Institutes of Health news release, this exciting development was reported by HealthDay and U.S. News & World Report. Learn more in this article.
10.29.2024
Fellows in Pulmonary and Critical Care joined researchers from across SQLIFTs for the first annual research bootcamp. Organized by Luisa Morales-Nebreda, MD, this event featured faculty who shared their research with our first-year fellows to recruit them to their laboratory and clinically based research programs. We welcome the next generation of academic physician researchers in lung disease to SQLIFTS!
10.22.2024
We are proud to announce that Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD has been named as one of the Top 100 Scientists in Biomedical in Stanford/Elsevier’s 2024 List. This list, compiled by Stanford University in collaboration with Elsevier, ranks the world’s most-cited scientists in the biomedical field, highlighting the global leaders whose research has made a profound impact. Dr. Chandel is the only researcher from Northwestern in the top 100. Congratulations!
10.14.2024
We are excited to share new research led by Marc A. Sala, MD, Alexander V. Misharin, MD, PhD, and G.R. Scott Budinger, MD and published in Nature Immunology. A study at the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive COVID-19 Center, co-directed by Dr. Sala, enrolled patients who had respiratory post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC, also known as "long COVID") with radiographic abnormalities. A positive association was found between fibrosis severity as determined by quantitative CT scan analysis and abundance of monocyte-derived alveolar macrophages (MoAMs), as well as levels of monocyte chemoattractant CCL2, in samples of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. However, single-cell RNA sequencing revealed similar transcriptional profiles in MoAMs whether the patient's fibrosis resolved or worsened—which matched those seen in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). First announced by Northwestern Medicine, this discovery was also reported by Crain's Chicago Business and CBS News Chicago. You can learn more in this commentary published in Nature Immunology News & Views, and in this article. See more news here.
09.30.2024
In a new Front Matter feature, PNAS reports on work published in Nature Aging by Thomas Stoeger, PhD demonstrating that biological aging is associated with decreased expression of longer genes. This report covers an earlier article by Dr. Stoeger and his collaborators published in Trends in Genetics and featured on the front page of cell.com. A new focus on the molecular-level physical processes of aging could provide new insights on old genomic datasets, paving the way for diagnostic tests based on new biomarkers and a new, conceptually different class of interventions. You can read more about this discovery and its potential implications in this news release by Cell Press, and in this article. See more news here.
09.17.2024
In a research briefing published in Nature Immunology, Benjamin Singer, MD and Luisa Morales-Nebreda, MD summarize their recent findings that the phenotype and specificity of lung T cell responses correlate with outcome in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. SQLIFTS investigators profiled T cell responses in the lungs of patients with pneumonia and discovered that T cells with an interferon-stimulated profile and specific for SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins support survival. Conversely, an association with poor clinical outcomes was found for T cells that develop an inflammatory profile driven by NF-κB and are directed against nonstructural proteins. Read the full publication here and learn more in this article.
07.01.2024
We are thrilled to announce that Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD has been selected as one of the inaugural recipients of a Pat & Shirley Ryan Family Research Acceleration Fund award. The fund was established to advance promising translational research in engineering and medicine at Northwestern. Dr. Chandel's proposal uses gene therapy to engineer the yeast protein NDI1 to regenerate NAD+, which is impaired in many primary mitochondrial diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s. Please read more about this award, its inaugural recipients, and their proposals in this article in Northwestern Now. Congratulations!
04.26.2024
Please join us in congratulating Simpson Querrey Data Science Fellow Rogan Grant, PhD, who has been named a 2024 Schmidt Science Fellow. The Schmidt Science Fellows program supports exceptional early-career scientists pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to solving problems of global urgency. In his interdisciplinary pivot from Systems Biology to Molecular and Cell Biology, Dr. Grant plans to identify pharmacologically actionable targets that can reduce neuroinflammation to delay or prevent the development of dementia. You can read more about Dr. Grant and his path-breaking research at Northwestern in this article in Northwestern Now.
03.20.2024
Warmest congratulations to SQLIFTS Director G.R. Scott Budinger, MD, who has been named a 2024 Faculty Mentor of the Year by the Medical Faculty Council. This award was established in 2008 to recognize and celebrate the importance of mentorship within the Feinberg academic community, encourage all departments and divisions to actively support and promote mentoring, and acknowledge established faculty members who foster the professional growth of junior faculty to help them achieve their full potential. Congratulations again to Dr. Budinger on this well-deserved award! Please read more about Dr. Budinger and his tips for mentors in this article.
02.22.2024
We are proud to announce that Momen M. Wahidi, MD, MBA has been selected as one of the top reviewers of the journal CHEST during the past year. This select group has been chosen based on the volume and quality of their reviews, which support the success of the journal. Dr. Wahidi was also named a 2023 Distinguished CHEST Educator. Please join us in expressing our appreciation to Dr. Wahidi for his dedication and congratulations on this achievement.
We would like to congratulate Benjamin Singer, MD on his recent induction into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), one of the oldest medical honor societies in the United States. Membership of the ASCI is composed of more than 3,000 physician-scientists dedicated to advancing medical research and improving treatments, as well as mentoring future physician-scientists. Congratulations also to SeungHye Han, MD, MPH, who was honored with the ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award, which recognizes physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research. You can read more about Drs. Singer and Han and their impactful research at Northwestern in this article.
02.12.2024
Please join us in congratulating Lisa F. Wolfe, MD, who has been selected by the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) to receive the Clinical Achievement Award. This award, newly established in 2024, honors a sleep clinician who has made transformative contributions to clinical sleep care. This award is well deserved by Dr. Wolfe, a fantastic clinician who is passionate about patient care. Congratulations!
We are pleased to announce that Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD and Richard G. Wunderink, MD were named to the 2023 Highly Cited Researchers list, published by Clarivate Analytics. It is a testament to the impact of the work we do that two of the twelve investigators who received this recognition from Feinberg are part of SQLIFTS. See the announcement in this article. Congratulations!
Congratulations to Karen M. Ridge, PhD, who has been invested as the Ernest S. Bazley Professor of Pulmonary Sciences. Endowed Chairs represent an important and meaningful recognition from Northwestern University and its supporters for the outstanding contributions of our most accomplished scholars to our missions. For the past two decades, Dr. Ridge has led Pulmonary and Critical Care's research programs in epithelial cell biology and made critical contributions to our understanding of the signaling role of the intermediate filament network. She is also a leader in education through her direction of the Kimberly Querrey Summer Research Program, the Training Program in Lung Sciences (T32), and the SQLIFTS Health Education Program.
Congratulations to Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD as a co-recipient of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) 2023 Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Chandel is the David W. Cugell Professor of Medicine, Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He began his career in 2000 as an independent investigator in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. His lab was an early pioneer in developing the concept that mitochondria as signaling organelles control physiology and diseases beyond ATP production. SQLIFTS is proud to include Dr. Chandel among its leaders. See the announcement in this article, and read more about Dr. Chandel and his research in this feature in Northwestern Medicine Magazine.
Congratulations to two investigators of SQLIFTS, SeungHye Han, MD, MPH and Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD, for their recent study published in published in Nature. Their collaboration led to demonstration that mitochondria regulate essential signals for the development of alveolar epithelial cells in the lung. Dr. Han, a physician-scientist, is finishing her K08 grant under the mentorship of Dr. Chandel. Dr. Han’s laboratory is following up the study by examining whether mitochondria-dependent signaling is disrupted during lung repair after injury resulting in lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis or prolonged viral pneumonia. This research could open new avenues for treatments that target mitochondria-dependent signaling in diseases involving lung damage and repair. You can read more about this important research in this article.
Northwestern Medicine scientists led by Alexander V. Misharin, MD, PhD helped develop the largest and most comprehensive cell map of the human lung in a recent study published in Nature Medicine. Revealing the great diversity of cell types in the lung and key differences between health and disease, the Human Lung Cell Atlas will be an important new resource for lung investigators. Read more in this article.
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has launched the new Simpson Querrey Lung Institute for Translational Science (SQLIFTS), ushering in a new era of lung research, education, and patient care at Northwestern Medicine. Read the announcement in this article.