Wenjie Yu, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Welsh Lab in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine, earned a Catalyst Award from the American Lung Association (ALA) in the amount of $50,000 per year for two years for his project, Submucosal Gland Hypertrophy in a Porcine Model of PCD: Histological, Cellular, and Pathophysiological Features.

In normally functioning lungs, airway glands produce mucus in order to trap and remove harmful pathogens and particles. However, in people living with chronic airway disease, these glands are enlarged, and their mucus is thicker and stickier than the norm, causing coughing and difficulty in breathing.

Through this grant, Yu and his fellow researchers will use a pig model to investigate the features of diseased airway glands in order to understand whether the features in them lead directly to abnormal mucus production.

“By answering these questions, we hope to better understand the disease-causing changes of airway glands in chronic airway disease,” Yu said. “This knowledge will lead to better treatment strategies to treat chronic lung diseases.’’

Yu also earned a Parker B. Francis fellowship grant earlier this year to focus on Mechanisms of submucosal gland hypertrophy in muco-obstructive lung disease. The success of the findings through this ALA grant would support future investigation of mechanistic causes of airway gland pathogenesis in chronic airway disease.

“I would like to sincerely thank my mentor, Dr. Michael Welsh, for his tremendous support and mentoring,” Yu said. “I would also like to thank the porcine model team, led by Drs. David Stoltz and Mahmoud Abou Alaiwa.”