Today’s Discoveries Series lectures will cover 50 years of the Surgeon General’s Report and asthma and molecular phenotyping, and Wednesday’s will delve into lung development and sleep-disordered breathing.
The lectures, which will chart seminal clinical and scientific breakthroughs, will be given concurrently from 8:30 to 9:15 a.m. The Discoveries Series is presented in celebration of the American Thoracic Society’s 110th anniversary.
TODAY
“Surgeon Generals’ Report: 50 Years of Progress”
Four Seasons Ballroom 1-2 (Lower Level), Colorado Convention Center
Jonathan Samet
Jonathan Samet, MD, MS, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, will review the origins of the Surgeon General’s Report on smoking, which can be traced to the 1930s and 1940s when lung cancer was on the rise, through the 1950s, when case-control and cohort studies and animal research strongly linked that increase to smoking.
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services marked the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report on smoking with a new report that pulled together the largest body of scientific evidence ever on the topic and a review of the policy tools available to end the smoking epidemic.
Dr. Samet served as the senior scientific editor of the report, which includes more than 1,000 pages of text and 500 tables and graphs. He said he believes the Surgeon Generals’ Reports have marshalled the research to lay a foundation for effective policy for a half-century.
“What’s important about the series of reports is the careful synthesis of large bodies of evidence in accordance with clear and transparent rules,” Dr. Samet says.
“The Surgeon Generals’ Report: 50 Years of Progress” is supported by an educational grant from Pfizer Inc.
“Asthma: The Emergence of Molecular Phenotyping and Its Impact on Therapy”
Bellco Theatre Section 2 (Street Level), Colorado Convention Center
Sally Wenzel
The prevalence of asthma is growing everywhere in the world, and its toll is high in terms of medical costs, missed school or work, and diminished quality of life. However, asthma’s burden may eventually be reduced through phenotyping, says Sally Wenzel, MD, director of the Asthma Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Those most likely to benefit initially from these advancements are the 10 to 20 percent of asthma patients whose symptoms are poorly controlled by inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta agonists—the cornerstones of therapy today.
“Even patients who respond to standard therapy will benefit,” Dr. Wenzel says. “There will still be times when their asthma is not controlled, and the ability to add a medication based on their phenotype, rather than doubling or quadrupling their regular medications (or adding systemic corticosteroids), will improve outcomes.
“Asthma: The Emergence of Molecular Phenotyping and Its Impact on Therapy” is supported by educational grants from AstraZeneca LP; Genentech; MEDA Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Teva Respiratory.
WEDNESDAY
“Lung Development and Disease: Lessons From Newborn Infants”
Bellco Theatre Section 2 (Street Level), Colorado Convention Center
Jeffrey Whitsett
The cellular and molecular processes that enable us to keep our lungs inflated, fight infections, and avoid pulmonary diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis and cancer as we age, may be the very same ones that enabled us to take our first breaths, according to Jeffrey Whitsett, MD, chief of the Division of Neonatology Perinatology and Pulmonary Biology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Philadelphia.
The origin of this insight begins with Drs. Mary Ann Avery and Jerry Mead’s discovery in the 1950s of the role pulmonary surfactant plays in respiratory distress syndrome in preterm babies, a disorder that was usually fatal, contributing to the appreciation of surfactant replacement therapy for preterm infants.
Three decades later, Dr. Whitsett and his research team discovered surfactant proteins B and C, small molecules that interact with lipids in surfactant to allow the alveoli to dynamically expand and contract without collapsing.
His laboratory identified and cloned genes encoding surfactant proteins (SP-A, B, C, D) and studied their roles in lung function. Together, these proteins play critical roles in innate host defense of the lung and in control of surfactant homeostasis.
In collaboration with many other laboratories, these discoveries made it possible to identify mutations in newborn infants that cause respiratory failure in full-term babies.
“Sleep Disordered Breathing: An Opportunity to Apply P4 Medicine”
Four Seasons Ballroom 1-2 (Lower Level), Colorado Convention Center
Allan I. Pack
The recognition that diseases comprise a spectrum of symptoms and responses to therapeutic intervention has driven many recent advances in medicine, from treating breast cancer to controlling asthma.
In his lecture, Allan I. Pack, MBChB, PhD, the John Miclot Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, will argue that a similar approach would benefit patients with sleep-disordered breathing. With its emphasis on personalized, predictive, preventative, and participatory care, P4 medicine has the potential to diagnose patients sooner, more conveniently, and at a lower cost. Applied to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), P4 medicine may result in slower progression of secondary diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension.
Dr. Pack is the co-author of a recently published analysis of 822 Icelandic patients newly diagnosed with moderate-to-severe OSA. In the report, Dr. Pack and his co-authors argue that while clinicians observe the heterogeneity of the disease in practice, subtypes of the disease have not been formally characterized, contributing to the under diagnosis of a highly prevalent disorder.