The Genomic Research Laboratory for Lung Fibrosis (Unterman lab)

Our goal: to uncover the basic mechanisms underlying lung fibrosis and develop new treatments.

Interstitital lung diseases (ILDs) consist of over 200 different diseases. Many patients, in particular those who are diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), develop severe lung scarring (called lung fibrosis) that necessitates lung transplantation for survival. Despite multidisciplinary approaches to diagnose ILD patients, in many cases the exact diagnosis is unclear. Furthermore, current treatment options may delay disease progression but cannot provide cure. In our laboratory, we employ cutting-edge genomic technologies, including single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and spatial transcriptomics, to study ILD patient-derived samples. We believe that by using these tools, we may come one step closer towards elucidating the biology of these intricate diseases, identify new biomarkers and develop novel treatments for ILD patients.

Dr. Unterman (lab PI) is a physician-scientist that serves as the head of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Center of Excellence at Ichilov, the largest center that treats ILD patients in Israel. He received his post-doc training in pulmonary fibrosis and advanced genomic techniques at Yale University. Dr. Yan Stein (lab manager) received his PhD from the Weizmann Institute, and is experienced in molecular and cell biology, and in computational analysis of genomic data.