Located in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, the Huang Laboratory focuses on understanding how epigenetic modifications arise, contribute, and participate in the pathogenesis of various lung diseases. Epigenetic modifications refer to heritable changes in chromatin structure that modulate gene expression and cell phenotype. These changes are recognized to be critical to the development of many chronic lung diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), COPD, asthma, and lung cancer. Our lab has traditionally focused on understanding how DNA methylation changes in fibroblasts contribute to progression of IPF, and1 recently, we have expanded our interest into studying the epigenetic changes that occur in other cell types of the lung, and in other diseases including asthma. We utilize a multitude of cell culture and animal modeling approaches to investigate gene-specific and genome-wide changes in DNA methylation and histone modifications.
