UTHSC professor receives 1.1 million to fund asthma treatment research

Dr. Rennolds Ostrom, Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), has received a grant totaling $1,136,476 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health. The award will be used to support his research around developing new, safer and more effective drugs to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
 
Currently, asthma and COPD are treated with drugs that relax airways. These drugs stimulate receptors by using the intracellular messenger cAMP, which regulates contraction, metabolism, survival, growth, division and many other functions of all cells in the body. This messenger is utilized by a vast array of hormones, neurotransmitters and other signals to alter cell function.  Research in Ostrom's lab focuses on understanding how this chemical messenger can carry different information based on where in the cell the signal is generated. The research team has found that cAMP can be produced in different locations inside cells and that different hormones can stimulate cAMP signals in some of these locations but not others. 
 
The researchers are also interested in knowing what elements are present inside cells to create these cAMP "compartments" and how these different locations regulate various cell functions. If these elements can be better manipulated to control how the cell responds to a given signal, new drugs can be developed that are safer and more effective for treating asthma and COPD.
 
"We are grateful to the National Institutes of Health, specifically the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, for funding our efforts to understand cAMP signaling compartmentalization," says Ostrom. "This is a fundamental biological process that is likely important in all cells. We believe our efforts can eventually improve not just the treatment of asthma and COPD but also many other diseases, including cardiovascular, renal and neurological disorders."