| Publications :: | Professor
of Pediatrics Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology 
Asthma is an important childhood chronic illness that results in significant
morbidity and even death in children. Over time chronic inflammation
causes an airway remodeling process that occurs in young children
with severe asthma. This remodeling process includes an excess growth
of smooth muscle, which in turn plays a critical role in causing over-reactive
airways. The focus of Dr. Betty Lew’s laboratory is to determine
how this process of excess growth of smooth muscle cells occurs in
asthma. She has found that certain inflammatory marker enzymes cause
smooth muscle to grow, and this process is dependent on airway smooth
muscle mannose receptors (ASM-MR). The full cloning and overexpression
of these receptors in a transgenic mouse model have been completed
in Dr. Lew’s laboratory. Further studies on the cloned receptors
and physiologic studies in this animal model will lead eventually
to treatments targeted to the process of excess airway smooth muscle
in children with asthma. |
| Lew DB,
Songu-Mize E, Pontow SE, Stahl PD and Rattazzi MC: A mannose receptor
mediates mannosyl-rich gly-coprotein- induced mitogenesis in bovine
airway smooth muscle cells. J. Clin. Invest. 94(5):1855-1863, 1994. Lew DB, Brown ER, Dempsey BK, Wright HM, and Malik KU: Contribution of PKC to b-hex-osaminidase- induced airway smooth muscle proliferation. Am. J. Physiol. 272 (Lung Cell. Mol. Physiol. 16): L639-L643, 1997. Lew DB: b-Hexosaminidases: Potent mitogens of airway smooth muscle. Allergy Asthma Proc., 19(6): 359-363, 1998. Dixon ER, Weinberg JA, and Lew DB: Effect of dexamethasone on bovine airway smooth muscle cell prolifera-tion. J. Asthma 36:519-525, 1999. Lew DB, Dempsey BK, Zhao Y, Muthalif M, Fatima S, and Malik KU: -Hexosaminidase- induced activation of p42/44MAPK is dependent on Ras and PKC and mediates mitogenesis in bovine ASMC. Am. J. Respir. Cell Mol. Biol. 21:111-118, 1999. Hyun Y-L, Lew DB, Park SH , Kim C-W, Paik WK, and Kim S: Enzymatic methy-lation of arginyl residues in -Gly-Arg- Gly- peptides. Biochem J. 348:573-578, 2000. |
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