Department of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh
Sally Wenzel, MD
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Professor of Medicine Phone: 412-802-6859 |
Bio
Dr. Wenzel completed her MD degree at the University of Florida. Following her residency in internal medicine at Wake Forest University and her fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, she spent 19 yrs at National Jewish and the University of Colorado where she rose to the rank of Professor of Medicine. During her years at National Jewish, she served on the Pulmonary–Allergy Advisory Committee to the FDA, was Assembly Chair for the American Thoracic Society (ATS) section on Allergy, Immunology and Inflammation and chaired the ATS International Conference Committee. She received the Elizabeth Rich Award for her role in promoting women in science. Dr. Wenzel serves as Deputy Editor for the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and serves on the LCMI Study Section for NIH grant reviews. She moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 2006 to take a position as director of the Asthma Institute.
Clinical Interests
Dr. Wenzel has had a passion for understanding and improving the treatment of asthma, in particular severe asthma. She served as Chair of the ATS workshop on severe asthma which developed the international consensus definition of severe asthma. She has worked to promote severe asthma as a disease whose pathogenesis goes beyond issues of non-compliance/adherence. Her studies of asthma phenotypes have led the field in understanding the complexities of asthma, and in explaining why mouse models of allergic inflammation do not adequately mirror the human condition.
Academic and Research Interests
In relation to her clinical interest in asthma, Dr. Wenzel has developed a strong translational program to study the pathobiology of the human disease. She is one of four NHLBI funded investigators in the Severe Asthma Research Program (SARP) network. Through SARP and her own efforts, Dr. Wenzel has accumulated a clinical database of nearly 500 subjects with asthma and normal controls, most of whom have matching airway tissue, cells and sputum/lavage. Her lab is one of very few labs which is able to match an extensive clinical phenotype of a subject with responses at a cellular/molecular level. Her current bench-lab interests include the role of epithelial cells in controlling airway inflammatory responses, as well as their interactions with mast cells and viruses. In addition, her lab is interested in differences in proximal vs distal lung fibroblasts and how cytokines/growth factors interact with the IL-4Ra receptor to enhance Th2 inflammation.
The data below show inhibition of the IL-4Ra pathway by aerosolized treatment of mild asthmatics improves airway obstruction post allergen challenge. This is first definitive study to show inhibition of IL-4/IL-13 improves outcomes in asthma:
The image below shows Fibroblasts obtained from the distal and proximal lung (from the same individual) that manifest markedly different phenotypes, with distal lung fibroblasts exhibiting more rapid proliferation and a myofibroblast like phenotype. Recent studies suggest that TGF-ß pathways are differentially activated in the two cell phenotypes. These different phenotypes may explain differences in repair and remodeling in airways vs parenchyma.
Epithelial cells play an important role in asthma pathogenesis from mucus production, to iNOS/exhaled nitric oxide, to control of cellular trafficking. Dr. Wenzel’s lab compares the ex vivo differences in epithelial cells from asthmatics compared to controls and then models these differences in air-liquid interface cell cultures from the same subjects.
Key Publications
Wenzel S, Wilbraham D, Fuller R, Getz EB, Longphre M.
Effect of an interleukin-4 variant on late phase asthmatic response to allergen
challenge in asthmatic patients: results of two phase 2a studies.
Lancet. 2007 Oct 20;370(9596):1422-31.
Trudeau J, Hu H, Chibana K, Chu HW, Westcott JY, Wenzel SE. Selective downregulation of prostaglandin E2-related pathways by the Th2 cytokine
IL-13.
J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2006 Jun;117(6):1446-54. Epub 2006 May 2.
4: Kotaru C, Schoonover KJ, Trudeau JB, Huynh ML, Zhou X, Hu H, Wenzel SE.
Regional fibroblast heterogeneity in the lung: implications for remodeling.
Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2006 Jun 1;173(11):1208-15. Epub 2006 Mar 16.
PubMed Link
News
Dr. Wenzel recently received the American Thoracic Society 2010 Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishment.