Dean Sheppard, M.D.

This afternoon, 2010 Amberson Lecturer Dean Sheppard, M.D., will tell International Conference attendees how important it is for researchers to follow their instincts—because even a bad hunch can lead to new and better answers.

Dr. Sheppard, who is the director of the Lung Biology Research Center and chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy and Sleep Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, said his lab has spent the last 20-plus years trying to understand how one family of receptors—integrins—contribute to lung function and disease.

“When I started studying this particular family, I had the naive idea that cells in the lung would use signals from these receptors to transform acute injury into chronic disease,” said Dr. Sheppard, who will deliver the Amberson Lecture during today’s awards ceremony, which will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m in the La Nouvelle Orleans B-C ballroom on the second level of the convention center. “Of course, that idea turned out to be largely nonsense, but we have been using lines of mice with knockout mutations and have been studying models of lung disease targeting these receptors ever since.”

Dr. Sheppard’s research focuses on how cells use members of the integrin family to detect, modify and respond to spatially restricted extracellular clues. The team has discovered roles for integrins in pulmonary fibrosis, acute lung injury, asthma and emphysema. They are now working to identify the pathways in which these integrins function as a way to find new targets tor the treatment of common lung diseases.

In his presentation, “How Integrins Modulate Lung Diseases: Much More Than Cellular Glue,” Dr. Sheppard said he will talk about the course of his research, focusing on two examples of unexpected roles for integrins in regulating pulmonary fibrosis and asthma.

“I will probably reflect on why I got interested in the family to begin with and the things that I never expected to learn,” he said. “Hopefully, I will get across the potential importance and clinical relevance of trying to figure out the small details of how things work in the lung and attendees will come away with ideas regarding the molecular pathways that are involved in the diseases in which they are interested.”