Vermont Lung Center

Interim Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and Associate Dean for Students Christa Zehle, M.D., recently announced the appointments of Shaden Eldakar-Hein, M.D., M.S., associate professor of medicine, and Prema Menon, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine, as interim assistant deans for students in the Office of Medical Student Education.

On Monday, April 8, Professor of Medicine Jason Bates, Ph.D., Sc.D., a world-class researcher and internationally recognized expert in the field of lung mechanics, will present his Research Laureate lecture, titled “A Physicist’s Approach to the Lung,” at noon in the Sullivan Classroom in the Medical Education Center at the Larner College of Medicine.

Twenty years ago, a small local chapter of the American Lung Association took on the daring task of bringing an Airways Clinical Research Center (ACRC) to Vermont. On February 28, clinicians, patients, donors, staff and board members gathered to celebrate two decades of lung disease treatment research in the only ACRC in a rural area - the Vermont Lung Center at UVM's ACRC, part of the nation’s largest not-for-profit network of clinical research centers dedicated to asthma and COPD treatment.

Three innovative projects spanning the fields of regenerative medicine, electrophysiology, and infectious diseases were selected to receive SPARK-VT research funding following a June 22 proposal presentation meeting at which University of Vermont faculty applicants pitched ideas to a panel of consultants from the biomedical and biotech arena. The awardees include UVM Larner College of Medicine Department of Medicine faculty members Daniel Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., Jason Botten, Ph.D., and Peter Spector, M.D.

New translational research led by UVM Professor Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., demonstrates a novel biological therapeutic candidate for regressing pulmonary fibrosis in a difficult-to-treat preclinical model of the disease, providing much-needed hope for the roughly 150,000 Americans suffering from this devastating condition.

The “Stem Cells, Cell Therapies, and Bioengineering in Lung Biology and Diseases” conference at the University of Vermont now offers a new, competitive travel scholarship that honors the legacy of late Alpha-1 Foundation co-founder John W. Walsh, who passed away March 7, 2017.

More than 50 percent of asthmatics have a body mass index (BMI) of greater than 30, and the majority of these patients have severe asthma that doesn’t respond well to traditional medication.

Screening presents a dilemma for lung and cancer specialists: Only about four percent of abnormal spots found on patients’ lungs during preventative CT screening turn out to be cancer, yet lung cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer and usually progresses rapidly, so catching it early is particularly important.

Matthew Poynter, Ph.D., knows that a scientist’s work can influence public policy. In his lab at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, he focuses on the environmental factors that trigger the immune system’s development of asthma.

Thousands of people in Vermont suffer from lung diseases. On April 27, 2016, nearly 100 people attended the inaugural LUNG FORCE Expo - a new one-day educational event designed to provide healthcare professionals and lung disease patients and their caregivers with information about the latest trends, research and treatment for lung disease.

The American Lung Association Airways Clinical Research Centers (ACRC) network conducts nationwide clinical trials to provide vital information about caring for people who have asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The American Thoracic Society (ATS) Assembly on Respiratory Structure and Function (RSF) selected Charles Irvin, Ph.D., professor of medicine and director, Vermont Lung Center, to be the inaugural recipient of the RSF 2016 Robert Crapo Lifetime Achievement Award for Pulmonary Diagnostics.

Patients in the intensive care unit who rely on mechanical ventilation for life support are often awake, but unable to verbalize their needs, posing a challenge for the physicians and nurses who care for them. And although health status might be the obvious choice for what’s on their minds, preliminary data has shown that that’s not always the case. Full Story >>