Pulmonary Pharmacology

Dr. W.S. Fred Wong received his BPharm (with cum laude) from the St. Johns’ University in New York, and his PhD in Pharmacology from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He moved to Lilly Research Laboratories at Indianapolis as a postdoctoral scientist with research focus on respiratory drug development and then to Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Division at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston as a Research Fellow in Medicine. After that, Dr. Wong joined the Department of Pharmacology at The National University of Singapore (NUS) and since built the Respiratory Pharmacology Laboratory. Dr. Wong is a Professor of Pharmacology, former Head of the Department, and former Assistant Dean and Vice Dean of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. He is the Director of the Drug Discovery and Optimization Platform (DDOP) in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He is the Principal Investigator of the Singapore-HUJ Alliance for Research and Enterprise (SHARE). Dr. Wong is the founding President of the Singapore Pharmacological Society. His research interest is to identify therapeutic targets and to discover and develop pharmacological agents for the treatment of airway inflammation, oxidative and DNA damage and remodeling in asthma and in COPD, using small molecule drugs, herbal medicinal bioactive molecules, antisense oligonucleotides (ASO)/siRNA technology, and pharmacoproteomics and metabolomics approaches. He has published a series of mechanism-based drug discovery studies targeting at tyrosine kinases, p38 MAPK, ERK1/2, PI3K, GSK-3, RIP2, RPS3 and AT2R responsible for asthma and COPD pathogenesis, that have paved the way for further investigation and innovative development of specific therapeutic strategies for asthma and COPD. Natural compounds like the diterpenoid lactone andrographolide and calcaratarin D, vitamin E isoform -tocotrienol, and anti-malarial drug artesunate were first reported by his laboratory to possess anti-inflammatory actions in both asthma and COPD. His laboratory has also identified lungkine, ApoL2 and house dust mite-induced DNA damage as potential mechanisms for asthma pathogenesis.

• Preface W.S. FRED WONG 1. Genomic and non-genomic effects of glucocorticoids in respiratory diseases Zhao-Yong Lee and Thai Tran 2. Recent developments in the use of monoclonal antibodies targeting the type 2 cytokines for severe asthma treatment Garry M. Walsh 3. Phosphodiesterase inhibitors and lung diseases Ivana Stolfa and Clive Page 4. Prospects for macrolide therapy of asthma and COPD Michael J. Parnham, Virginia Norris, Jennifer A. Kricker, Thorarinn Gudjonsson, and Clive P. Page 5. Targeting the renin angiotensin system for respiratory diseases Phyllis X.L. Gan, W. Liao, Kira M. Linke, D. Meid, X.D. Wu, and W.S. Fred Wong 6. Progress in the development of kinase inhibitors for treating asthma and COPD Nathaniel McClean, Jeffery D. Hasday, and Paul Shapiro 7. Anti-fibrotic strategies and pulmonary fibrosis Avanka Gunatilaka, Stephanie Zhang, Wan Shun Daniel Tan, and Alastair G. Stewart 8. Novel treatments against airway inflammation in COPD based on drug repurposing Rui Chen, Yuting Cui, and Judith C.W. Mak 9. Senotherapy for lung diseases Peter J. Barnes 10. Delivery technology of inhaled therapy for asthma and COPD Michael Y.T. Chow, Harry W. Pan, and Jenny K.W. Lam