2018

Dr. Adegunsoye is a Clinical Instructor in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care at the University of Chicago. He attended the University of Ibadan medical school in Nigeria, completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Drexel University, and trained at the University of Chicago Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship Program. While working under Dr. Mary Strek and Dr. Imre Noth during his fellowship, Dr. Adegunsoye identified unique clinical phenotypes among racially diverse patient cohorts with pulmonary fibrosis. His current research focuses on utilizing genetic data from diverse races to improve the clinical decision-making process and outcomes for patients with pulmonary fibrosis.

Dr. Alysandratos obtained his medical degree and doctoral degree in Immunopharmacology from the University of Athens in Greece. He completed Internal Medicine training at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas TX, followed by clinical fellowships in Sleep and Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine at Boston University, where he was recruited as a physician-scientist at the rank of Assistant Professor in Medicine.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Darrell Kotton at the Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University and Boston Medical Center, Dr. Alysandratos is developing a pluripotent stem cell (PSC) model to study the role of alveolar type 2 (AT2) cell dysfunction in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis, exemplified by interstitial lung diseases that are associated with surfactant protein-C mutations.

Dr. Alysandratos has received many honors and awards, including the Basic Science Award from the American Lung Association, an Abstract Scholarship and Fellows Track Symposium Award from the American Thoracic Society, and a Research Prize and Award from the Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Institute. As a resident he became a voted member of the AΩA Medical Honor Society.

Dr. Linlin Gu is a researcher scientist in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He received his DVM and Ph.D. in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Yangzhou University, China. During his postdoctoral training in Dr. A. Brent Carter’s laboratory, he focused on investigating molecular mechanisms that lung macrophages utilize to induce the development and progression of pulmonary fibrosis. Dr. Gu found that the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), by regulating mitochondrial calcium influx, mediated pro-fibrotic polarization of lung macrophages that contributed to fibrosis progression. He has extended these studies to uncover that the regulation of macrophage bioenergetics by MCU facilitates macrophage apoptosis resistance in the development of pulmonary fibrosis.