.jpg "Christopher Fortner, MD, PhD photo")
Associate Professor
SUNY Upstate
Chris Fortner, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Pediatric Pulmonology at SUNY Upstate in Syracuse, NY. He is the CF Care Center Director, TDN Site Director, and Pediatric CF Program Director at SUNY Upstate. Prior to joining SUNY Upstate, he was faculty at Duke University. He completed pediatric pulmonology fellowship and pediatric residency at Duke. His interest in cystic fibrosis began during medical school at the University of Cincinnati’s MD, PhD training program.
His research interests include clinical trials for cystic fibrosis therapies and quality improvement of CF newborn screening. He also has the privilege of taking care of two of the youngest CF patients ever exposed to CFTR modulators, both born to mothers with CF who were on elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor during their pregnancies. Each of these children showed minimal clinical features of CF in the newborn period, likely due to the CFTR modulators helping preserve some CFTR function during fetal development. His clinical care of these children not only involves keeping them as healthy as possible, but monitoring for possible organ damage due to cystic fibrosis if they have no access to CFTR modulator therapies at their young age.