Photo of Monica Kraft
Monica Kraft
Chair, Department of Medicine
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Professor, Medicine
Primary Department
Medicine
Department Affiliations
Medicine
(520) 626-7174
kraftm@email.arizona.edu
Work Summary
Monica Kraft's research focus is in the areas of adult asthma, the role of infection in asthma and the role of the distal lung in asthma and airway remodeling.
Research Interest
Monica Kraft, MD, is chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, and the Robert and Irene Flinn Endowed Professor of Medicine.Prior to joining the UA in 2014, Dr. Kraft was at Duke University, where she served as chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, as the Charles C. Johnson, MD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine, and as director of the Duke Asthma, Allergy and Airway Center. As vice chair for research in the Duke University Department of Medicine from 2009-2013, Dr. Kraft implemented several important initiatives to support the department’s research endeavors and was instrumental in the re-submission and renewal of Duke’s National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA).Dr. Kraft has more than 150 publications in the areas of adult asthma, the role of infection in asthma and the role of the distal lung in asthma and airway remodeling. Her work has appeared in such prestigious publications as the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and Chest. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Lung Association.

Publications

Ledford, J., Addison, K., Guerra, S., Rojas Quintero, J., Owen, C., Martinez, F., & Kraft, M. (2016). “Club cell secretory protein deficiency leads to altered lung function in naïve mice. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
BIO5 Collaborators
Stefano Guerra, Monica Kraft
Durack, J., Lynch, S. V., Nariya, S., Bhakta, N. R., Beigelman, A., Castro, M., Dyer, A. M., Israel, E., Kraft, M., Martin, R. J., Mauger, D. T., Rosenberg, S. R., Sharp-King, T., White, S. R., Woodruff, P. G., Avila, P. C., Denlinger, L. C., Holguin, F., Lazarus, S. C., , Lugogo, N., et al. (2016). Features of the bronchial bacterial microbiome associated with atopy, asthma, and responsiveness to inhaled corticosteroid treatment. The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology.

Compositional differences in the bronchial bacterial microbiota have been associated with asthma, but it remains unclear whether the findings are attributable to asthma, to aeroallergen sensitization, or to inhaled corticosteroid treatment.

Sutherland, E. R., Lehman, E. B., Teodorescu, M., Wechsler, M. E., & , N. H. (2009). Body mass index and phenotype in subjects with mild-to-moderate persistent asthma. The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 123(6), 1328-34.e1.

Although obesity has been hypothesized to worsen asthma, data from studies of subjects with well-characterized asthma are lacking.

Lewis, C. C., Chu, H. W., Westcott, J. Y., Tucker, A., Langmack, E. L., Sutherland, E. R., & Kraft, M. (2005). Airway fibroblasts exhibit a synthetic phenotype in severe asthma. The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 115(3), 534-40.

Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) may have a significant role in airway remodeling in asthma, because it is a powerful inductor of many airway fibroblast activities such as collagen synthesis.

Castro, M., Rubin, A. S., Laviolette, M., Fiterman, J., De Andrade Lima, M., Shah, P. L., Fiss, E., Olivenstein, R., Thomson, N. C., Niven, R. M., Pavord, I. D., Simoff, M., Duhamel, D. R., McEvoy, C., Barbers, R., Ten Hacken, N. H., Wechsler, M. E., Holmes, M., Phillips, M. J., , Erzurum, S., et al. (2010). Effectiveness and safety of bronchial thermoplasty in the treatment of severe asthma: a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 181(2), 116-24.

Bronchial thermoplasty (BT) is a bronchoscopic procedure in which controlled thermal energy is applied to the airway wall to decrease smooth muscle.