An address by G.R. Scott Budinger, MD, chief, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital (and Prentice Hospital), drew nearly 45 attendees to the Jan. 26 Winter Lung Series Conference event at the University of Arizona BIO5 Institute.
Dr. Budinger’s topic was: "The Role of Macrophage Ontogeny in the Age-Related Susceptibility to Lung Disease."
Macrophages are a type of white blood cell that engulfs and digests cellular debris, foreign substances, microbes, cancer cells, and anything else that doesn’t have proteins specific to healthy body cells on its surface. The process called phagocytosis. Phagocytes are found in all tissues, patrolling for potential pathogens and disease-causing cells. Ontogeny refers simply to how an organism originates and develops to maturity.
A macrophage of a mouse forming two processes to phagocytize two smaller particles, possibly pathogens. [SOURCE: Wikipedia]
Dr. Budinger is also the Ernest S. Bazley Professor of Airway Diseases and chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine—as well as a leading lung disease investigator internationally recognized for his research examining mechanisms by which environmental stresses activate signaling pathways in lung cells that induce lung injury in fibrosis.
His recent work aims to understand how these responses change with aging to increase the risk of acute and chronic lung disease. The talk was in Room 103 of the Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building.
The Winter Lung Series Conferences (WLSC), held in conjunction with the UA Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center and UA BIO5 Institute, brings in nationally and internationally renowned physician-scientists to discuss the latest research in various fields of pulmonary medicine and share those emerging ideas and clinical advances with our faculty, fellows and residents in training at the UA Health Sciences colleges, as well as community physicians.
To learn more about the WLSC events and speakers, click here.
ALSO SEE:
“Winter Lung Series Conference: Dr. Scott Budinger on ‘Macrophage Ontogeny & Age-Related Susceptibility to Lung Disease’” | Posted Jan. 12, 2017
"Grand Rounds Getting Crowded with DOM New Additions, Other Events in New Year" | Posted Dec. 22, 2016
"Past ATS President Dr. Nicholas Hill Launches 2016 Winter Lung Series Conference" | Posted Dec. 15, 2016