Francesca Polverino
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is usually described by how much air a person can force out of their lungs. But that single number hides very different kinds of damage.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Physiology
- Topics
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
emphysema
B cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Test whether B cells, lymphoid follicles and antibody products are more abundant in emphysematous lung than in lung with less emphysema, using immunostaining and imaging mass cytometry correlated with CT-defined lobar emphysema.
- Determine whether lung lymphoid follicles in COPD are clonal by isolating their B cells with laser capture microdissection and sequencing B cell receptor rearrangements with next-generation sequencing.
- Measure whether lung B cells from COPD patients are hyperactivated, testing antigen-driven activation and immunoglobulin production with in vitro cultures and ELISPOT assays and profiling subsets by flow cytometry.
- Define lung B cell gene expression and receptor repertoires by single-cell RNA sequencing, then generate monoclonal immunoglobulins and identify their lung binding targets by mass spectrometry.
- Test whether circulating B cell phenotypes, transcriptomes and plasma immunoglobulin reactivity against lung matrix mirror lung findings and track with emphysema extent in the same subjects.
More about the research
Some patients have emphysema, in which the walls between air sacs are destroyed, and recent work shows that those patients — not COPD patients generally — carry a strong signature of B cells in their lungs, regardless of how limited their airflow is. B cells are the immune cells that make antibodies, and the concern is that in emphysema they are acting on the wrong targets and attacking lung tissue. The central hypothesis here is that emphysema is marked by changes in what genes B cells switch on, which in turn drive exaggerated and misdirected antibody responses that contribute to the breakdown of lung tissue.
Why it matters
COPD is treated largely as one disease, yet patients differ in what is actually damaging their lungs. By tying B cell behavior and antibody targets to CT-measured emphysema in the same patients, this work could identify the subgroup most likely to benefit from therapies aimed at B cells or their antibodies, and could yield blood-based markers that flag such patients early — a step toward more personalized treatment for a condition with a heavy global burden.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir
Columbia University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
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The school
Baylor College of Medicine: 38 labs on PI Pages, $881M a year on research, 115 research doctorates a year.
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