Fernando Martinez

Fernando Martinez

Professor, Pediatrics
Director, Asthma / Airway Disease Research Center
Endowed Chair, Swift - McNear
Regents Professor
Professor, Genetics - GIDP
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Contact
(520) 626-5954

Research Interest

Dr. Fernando D. Martinez is a Regents’ Professor and Director of the Asthma & Airway Disease Research Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Martinez is a world-renowned expert, and one of the most highly regarded researchers, in the field of childhood asthma. His primary research interests are the natural history, genetics, and treatment of childhood asthma. His groundbreaking research has had an impact on his field in numerous ways, most prominent among them the development of the concept of the early origins of asthma and COPD. This concept is now widely accepted as the potential basis for the design of new strategies for the prevention of these devastating illnesses affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. In addition, Dr. Martinez has made important contributions to our understanding of the role of gene-environment interactions in the development of asthma and allergies. He has also been the principal investigator of one of the Clinical Centers that are part of the NHLBI Asthma Treatment Networks, which have contributed fundamental new evidence on which to base national guidelines for the treatment of the disease. Dr. Martinez currently serves on national scientific boards including the NHLBI National Advisory Council and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. He was a member of the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program that was responsible for the development of the Expert Panel Report: Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma in 1997 and its first revision in 2001. He also has been a member of the FDA Pulmonary-Allergy Drugs Advisory Committee and the Board of Extramural Advisors of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Dr. Martinez’s research and vision are well detailed in more than 250 original research papers and editorials, many in collaboration with investigators from all over the world. He is frequently invited to give keynote presentations at national and international meetings.

Publications

Chan, J. Y., Stern, D. A., Guerra, S., Wright, A. L., Morgan, W. J., & Martinez, F. D. (2015). Pneumonia in childhood and impaired lung function in adults: a longitudinal study. Pediatrics, 135(4), 607-16.
BIO5 Collaborators
Stefano Guerra, Fernando Martinez

Diminished lung function and increased prevalence of asthma have been reported in children with a history of early lower respiratory illnesses (LRIs), including pneumonia. Whether these associations persist up to adulthood has not been established.

Lange, P., Celli, B., Agustí, A., Boje Jensen, G., Divo, M., Faner, R., Guerra, S., Marott, J. L., Martinez, F. D., Martinez-Camblor, P., Meek, P., Owen, C. A., Petersen, H., Pinto-Plata, V., Schnohr, P., Sood, A., Soriano, J. B., Tesfaigzi, Y., & Vestbo, J. (2015). Lung-Function Trajectories Leading to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The New England journal of medicine, 373(2), 111-22.
BIO5 Collaborators
Stefano Guerra, Fernando Martinez

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is thought to result from an accelerated decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) over time. Yet it is possible that a normal decline in FEV1 could also lead to COPD in persons whose maximally attained FEV1 is less than population norms.

Guerra, S., Halonen, M., Vasquez, M. M., Spangenberg, A., Stern, D. A., Morgan, W. J., Wright, A. L., Lavi, I., Tarès, L., Carsin, A., Dobaño, C., Barreiro, E., Zock, J., Martínez-Moratalla, J., Urrutia, I., Sunyer, J., Keidel, D., Imboden, M., Probst-Hensch, N., , Hallberg, J., et al. (2015). Relation between circulating CC16 concentrations, lung function, and development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease across the lifespan: a prospective study. The Lancet. Respiratory medicine, 3(8), 613-20.
BIO5 Collaborators
Stefano Guerra, Fernando Martinez

Low concentrations of the anti-inflammatory protein CC16 (approved symbol SCGB1A1) in serum have been associated with accelerated decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We investigated whether low circulating CC16 concentrations precede lung function deficits and incidence of COPD in the general population.

Gardeux, V., Bosco, A., Li, J., Halonen, M. J., Jackson, D., Martinez, F. D., & Lussier, Y. A. (2015). Towards a PBMC "virogram assay" for precision medicine: Concordance between ex vivo and in vivo viral infection transcriptomes. Journal of biomedical informatics, 55, 94-103.

Understanding individual patient host-response to viruses is key to designing optimal personalized therapy. Unsurprisingly, in vivo human experimentation to understand individualized dynamic response of the transcriptome to viruses are rarely studied because of the obvious limitations stemming from ethical considerations of the clinical risk.

Lussier, Y. A. (2015). eQTL networks unveil enriched mRNA master integrators downstream of complex disease-associated SNPs. Journal of Biomedical Informatics.