Overview
These two multicenter studies ask related questions about the transplanted airway: what molecular signals appear before a lung starts to fail, and what severe early injury does to the airway over the following year. Both are run across several transplant programs rather than at UCSF alone, because a finding at one hospital does not always hold at another.
Airway Brush in CLAD (ABC) Study
Chronic lung allograft dysfunction is usually recognized once lung function has already declined, by which point much of the airway damage is permanent. The ABC Study is testing whether cells brushed from the lining of the small airways carry a molecular signal that appears earlier than that.
The study collects airway brush samples prospectively across North American lung transplant centers and links them to what happens to each recipient afterward. It expands the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Lung Transplant Consortium biorepository to include these samples, and it is intended to serve as the platform on which rapid molecular diagnostics and later precision trials are built.
John Greenland co-leads the study with John McDyer at the University of Pittsburgh. It is supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and runs through January 2027.
The Clinical and Molecular Impacts of Lung Primary Graft Dysfunction
Primary graft dysfunction is severe lung injury in the first three days after transplant. This study follows what happens next, tracking both clinical outcomes and inflammation in the airway across the first year after surgery.
The study established an NIH Lung Transplant Consortia Clinical Center linking the University of Pittsburgh, UCSF, and Johns Hopkins. Studying severe primary graft dysfunction requires more patients than any single program transplants, which is why the work is structured this way.
John Greenland leads the UCSF site, with Christian Merlo at Johns Hopkins and John McDyer at the University of Pittsburgh. It is supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute under award U01-HL163294 and runs through July 2027.
Taking part
To ask whether either study is open to you, contact the lab at [email protected]