As a research scientist, my interests include lung biology and diseases of the lung. The goals of my lab are to determine the mechanisms of lung diseases and to identify therapeutics to treat lung disease.
My education in veterinary school led to my interest in research. It helped me realize that to discover therapies for lung disease, I first needed to understand basic lung biology. I’m dedicated to this study and hope to discover therapies for lung diseases that have no known treatments.
One of my discoveries is identifying the roles of lung transcription factors that regulate the production of mucus, contributing to the severity of asthma, cystic fibrosis (CF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and lung cancer. This discovery led to the identification of potential therapeutic targets to control hyper-secreting mucus and lung tumor growth.
I have more than16 years of research experience and started working at Cincinnati Children’s in 2004. My research has been published in various respected journals, including Oncogene, EMBO Molecular Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation and American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
DVM: Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 1997.
PhD: University of California, Riverside, CA, 2002.
Pulmonary Biology
FOXA2 Cooperates with Mutant KRAS to Drive Invasive Mucinous Adenocarcinoma of the Lung. Cancer Research. 2023; 83:1443-1458.
Abstract 1479: FOXA2 induces invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma of the lung in the presence of mutant KRAS. Cancer Research. 2023; 83:1479.
CRISPRi links COVID-19 GWAS loci to LZTFL1 and RAVER1. EBioMedicine. 2022; 75:103806.
CRISPRi-mediated functional analysis of NKX2-1-binding sites in the lung. Communications Biology. 2021; 4:568.
Clinical application of a lung cancer organoid (tumoroid) culture system. Npj Precision Oncology. 2021; 5:29.
Primary mucinous adenocarcinoma of the thymus; a rare type of thymic carcinoma. Case Report. SN Comprehensive Clinical Medicine. 2021; 3:1233-1237.
CRISPRi-mediated functional analysis of lung disease-associated loci at non-coding regions. NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics. 2020; 2:lqaa036.