Mount Sinai’s Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine and the Mount Sinai-National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute possess unique strengths in pulmonary investigation and has established a robust portfolio of collaborative research efforts as we endeavor to discover how lung diseases develop, how they spread, who is vulnerable, and what actions can be taken to control or cure them.
Several multi-center clinical trials are underway, as well as fundamental science and translational research efforts. Select research in progress includes:
- Charles Powell, MD, Institute CEO, supported by major NIH grants, is exploring the genomics of lung cancer tumors in order to determine endotypes and phenotypes (distinct traits and characteristics) with the goal of creating personalized treatment strategies. Dr. Powell has recruited Hideo Watanabe, MD, PhD from Dana Farber to extend lung cancer research to include studies of single cell genomics and epigenetic regulation of lung development and lung cancer differentiation.
- Linda Rogers, MD, Clinical Director of the Asthma Program, recruited in 2014 to Mount Sinai, explores severe asthma in urban populations and asthma in the elderly. She is an investigator in the Digital Medicine program to evaluate mobile health applications such as the Asthma Health Study. Current grants support her studies in inhaled steroids for the treatment of asthma and methods for reducing airway reactivity. Dr. Rogers is the site PI for the ALA Airways Network at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- David Rapoport, MD, is the Director for the Center of Integrative Sleep Medicine. Dr. Rapoport and his research and clinical team were recruited in 2015. The goals of the program are to study sleep pathophysiology and study the effects that sleep and sleep disorders have on other organ systems as well as to maximize the opportunities for training and support for young academic researchers in this area. Dr. Rapoport’s team includes Indu Ayappa, PhD who holds a K24 award, Neomi Shah, MD who is a K23 funded investigator, and Neurologist Andrew Varga, MD.
- Sidney Braman, MD, Clinical Director of the COPD Program, is site PI for the PCORI RELIANCE COPD Network trial at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- Lisa Richman, MD and Kusum Mathews, MD are co-investigators in the NHLBI funded PETAL (Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury) Clinical Trials Network site at Mount Sinai.
- Adam Morgenthau, MD, Director of the Sarcoidosis Clinic, is conducting multiple clinical trials on potential therapeutics for the treatment of the disease, and has a provisional patent on a new sarcoid therapeutic strategy that targets serum amyloid alpha.
- Maria Padilla, MD, Clinical Director of the Advanced Lung/ILD Program, has a number of clinical trials underway on potential treatments for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the most common form of Interstitial Lung Disease, which is often caused by environmental toxins.
- Juan Wisnivesky, MD, DrPh, Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Vice-Chair for Research, is a Pulmonologist Clinical investigator with interest in comparative effectiveness evaluation in respiratory diseases that include asthma, lung cancer and COPD. He is mentor of the Pulmonary Journal Club and mentor to Pulmonary research fellows.
- Gerry Turino, MD, Director of Lung Research at Mount Sinai Morningside and Professor of Medicine, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, a leading expert in COPD research, is advancing work on COPD biomarker development and treatment strategies.
Mount Sinai’s extensive and diverse patient population, sophisticated technologies dedicated to data capture and analysis, culture of collaborative, interdisciplinary research, and commitment to personalized treatment, will support expanded Institute research efforts. National Jewish Health’s large network related to COPD trials will be of particular importance moving forward as we develop new studies with the goal of halting the increase in the incidence of COPD and reducing the distress experienced by patients with the disease.