Suzanne Cloonan, Associate Professor in Respiratory Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin has been awarded a prestigious Laureate Consolidator Award from the Irish Research Council (IRC) to continue her investigations into finding new therapies for Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The exchequer funded Starting and Consolidator Laureate Awards Programme, which totalled over €24 million in the latest call, aims to cultivate a group of elite researchers who will form the bedrock for new discoveries and the future application of those discoveries for economic or societal impact.
This award will build on Suzanne’s existing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research programme, to understand and develop new treatment approaches for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and place Ireland on the map for world-class COPD research and will also raise much needed awareness for COPD and COPD-related research.
COPD is the most prevalent respiratory disease in adults affecting over 170 million people globally and tops all non-communicable respiratory diseases combined in mortality. While COPD is already the third leading cause of death worldwide, death rates from COPD are predicted to rapidly intensify due to a rising and ageing global population, outweighing any potential improvements in care. With little or no advances in therapy in decades, COPD is irreversible and inexorably progressive leading to a severe impairment in quality of life. Given the burden of COPD on human health, new and better personalised therapies are therefore desperately needed.
Even though COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in Ireland, translational research into this debilitating disease in Ireland is limited. The new project funded under the IRC Programme, “The battle for IRON in the alveolar space underlies susceptibility to COPD” aims to address this gap. The research is premised on the theory that dysregulation in iron-related pathways is an important feature of COPD, which can be leveraged for the design of new treatments for COPD, as well as new ways to diagnose this debilitating disease.
Suzanne received her PhD in Biochemistry in 2010 from the University of Dublin, Trinity College Ireland. She carried out her Post-Doctoral training in Dr Augustine MK Choi’s laboratory in Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. In 2014, she moved to Weill Cornell Medicine and obtained the prestigious Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the National Institute of Health, as well as a Biomedical Research Grant from the American Lung Association. The Cloonan Lab, relocated from Cornell to Trinity College Dublin in 2019 on foot of Suzanne being awarded the SFI President of Ireland Future Research Leaders award.
Dr Suzanne Cloonan, Associate Professor in Respiratory Biochemistry, School of Medicine