Xinhui Wu

Dr. Xinhui Wu (XW) located at the University of Groningen, has been working in the field of regenerative pharmacology for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Over the last six years, she has been actively involved in developing and improving translational models of environmental exposure-induced COPD and prospective human populations, all valuable assets for the study of human lung biology. Specifically, by using novel tools, such as 3D organoids and precision-cut-lung slices (PCLS), she showed that epithelial progenitors functionally interact with their surrounding niche during regeneration, which can be distorted by cigarette smoke and air pollution. She has also screened for therapeutic strategies to achieve lung regeneration and several pharmacological strategies including ROCK inhibition; antioxidants NAC and MitoQ; the analogs of PGE2 and PGI2 were discovered as potential regenerative therapeutic targets in lung repair for COPD. Moreover, she also identified that molecular pathways such as WNT-5A/B signaling, TGF- signaling, growth factors-related signaling, cell death-related signaling, and circadian clock signaling all appear to play fundamental roles in the defective functions of alveolar epithelial progenitors.