The Pulmonary Gene Research group was founded in June 2004 by Martin Brutsche, MD, PhD (second left). It consists of Michaël Facompré PhD, an experienced bench-side researcher (second right), Florent Baty PhD, a biostatistician and specialist for multivariate analyses (right), and Meiyin Gao (left), a PhD student in bioinformatics.

Our work is focused on the understanding of lung diseases at the genomic level using the microarray technology. Our current collaborative projects include disease class prediction in sarcoidosis, biomarker identification in lung cancer, gene profiling of fibroblasts treated with steroids, etc.

Gene regulation and its modifiation in interstitial lung diseases with focus on the mesenchymal compartment. For this topic we can profit from the competence of the Pulmonary Cell Research Group (Prof. Michael Tamm) as a whole. Also, we collaborate with Pneumology Departments of the Universities of Newcastle-GB (Prof. Paul Corris, Dr Robert Rutherford), and Galway-IRL (Dr. John Gilmartin). This project line has leed to international recognition of our team in the field of sarcoidosis - a chronic inflammatory disorder associated with interstitial lung disease. Together with the department of Pathology (PD Dr. lukas bubendorf) we could validate EGR-1 as a promising prognostic gene in sarcoidosis.

Prediction of response to treatment in non-small cell lung cancer by functional genomics. This is a highly interdisciplinary project together with the Departments of Pathology (PD Dr. Lukas Bubendorf), Thoracic Sugery (Dr. Franco Gambazzi) and Oncology (Dr Miklos Pless) of the university of Basel, but also involvement by Krebsliga beider Basel, as well as within a SAKK-trrial 19-03 led by the Oncologic Departments of the St. Gallen (Dr. G. D'Addario) and the University of Bern (Dr Daniel Betticher).