Professor, Department of Medicine and Department of Cell Biology and Physiology
Marsico Lung Institute/Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Carla M. P. Ribeiro, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Physiology and Cell Biology, Marsico Lung Institute, Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Ribeiro received her PhD degree from Duke University, Durham, NC (1992) and did her postdoctoral studies at NIH/NIEHS, Research Triangle Park, NC (1993-1998). She subsequently joined the Cystic Fibrosis Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, where she followed a career as a pulmonary biologist.
Research in the Ribeiro laboratory focuses on studying mechanisms of airway inflammatory responses relevant to the pathogenesis of airway diseases characterized by mucus obstruction, inflammation, and oxidative stress, such as cystic fibrosis, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In particular, the Ribeiro laboratory studies the functional roles of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and the mitochondria in the regulation of intracellular calcium signals and calcium-mediated inflammation, and ER stress responses pertinent to the pathophysiology of these pulmonary diseases. In collaboration with Dr. Martina Gentzsch's laboratory, Dr. Ribeiro has reported that the efficacy of CFTR modulators is enhanced by airway inflammation.
The Ribeiro group was the first to implicate the ER stress pathway mediated by the ubiquitous inositol requiring enzyme 1α (IRE1α) in cytokine production by human bronchial epithelia, using translational models relevant to CF. Dr. Ribeiro and colleagues also made the key discovery that the isoform IRE1β is only expressed in mucous cells, is up-regulated in CF and asthmatic airway epithelia, and is required for allergic inflammation-induced airway epithelial mucin overproduction. The recent findings implicating IRE1β in the pathogenesis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis associated with airway epithelial mucin overproduction expanded the importance of IRE1β in lung diseases characterized by increased mucus production and airway obstruction.