Research Associate
Marsico Lung Institute/Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Dr. Deborah M. Cholon, PhD, is a Research Associate at the Marsico Lung Institute (MLI) at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill. She received her PhD in Microbiology in 2003 from Yale University. Her postdoctoral training began with Dr. Joseph W. St. Geme III in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis and then continued at Duke University when the laboratory moved. In 2007, she expanded her interests to cystic fibrosis (CF) at UNC-Chapel Hill where she studied the misfolding and trafficking of CFTR in human airway epithelial cells in Dr. Martina Gentzsch’s laboratory. Her research has focused on understanding molecular details of CFTR mutations that lead to CF and evaluation of therapeutics that repair these defects in 2D and 3D airway models. In addition, she is studying the impact of bacterial and viral infection on ion transport and CFTR rescue in CF airways, and the efficacy and mechanisms of CFTR modulators. More recently, Dr. Cholon has developed optimized methods to track CFTR in primary bronchial and nasal cultures by immunofluorescence microscopy. As an investigator at the MLI at UNC, she conducts her research and supports CFTR detection for various MLI CF projects.