Lab Team
Jason Scott Debley, MD, MPH
Dr. Jason Debley’s research has spanned clinical, epidemiologic, basic and mechanistic patient-oriented translational asthma research. His work over the past two decades has concentrated on investigation of the role of the airway epithelium in asthma pathobiology, with focus areas including study of innate immune responses of airway epithelial cells to respiratory viruses and aberrant epithelial regulation of airway remodeling responses. He built a translational research program wherein primary bronchial epithelial cells are obtained from asthmatic and healthy children undergoing elective surgical procedures at Seattle Children’s Hospital. This infrastructure is a unique resource in the U.S., providing a steady source of primary bronchial airway epithelial cells from carefully characterized children with and without asthma that are used to conduct mechanistic research. A highly innovative aspect of his program is that ex vivo experiments are conducted using primary airway epithelial cells from donors who are genotyped for polymorphisms of interest and stratified by clinical characteristics of donors (e.g. T2 vs. non-T2 endotype based on biomarker signatures, exacerbations, lung function), and donors are prospectively followed to track incident exacerbations and lung function change over time. This allows for investigation of disease mechanisms using data linking ex vivo mechanistic experiments to asthma endotype/phenotype, donor genotype, and longitudinal donor clinical outcomes. Dr. Debley also serves as director of the Center for Respiratory Biology and Therapeutics (CRBT) at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.
Stephen Ray Reeves, MD, PhD
Dr. Stephen Reeves is a principal investigator in the Center for Respiratory Biology and Therapeutics (CRBT) at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. His research interests include investigating the contribution of cell signaling and extracellular matrix changes during lung disease and evaluating the effects of the extracellular matrix remodeling on airway inflammation. His specific areas of research interest include lung epithelial cell–stromal cell crosstalk that promotes a pro-inflammatory microenvironment during chronic lung inflammation (e.g., asthma) and acute lung inflammation (e.g., viral infections).
Patricia Andrea dela Cruz, MD, PhD
Allergy Fellow
Camille Gates, BS
Lab Technician II
Weston Thomas Powell, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Lucille Rich, BS
Research Scientist I
Nyssa Becker Samanas, PhD
Research Scientist IV
Elizabeth Vanderwall, BS
Research Scientist I
Sathi Wijeyesinghe, MD, PhD
Allergy Fellow