“When you are around people who are interested in what you are interested in, the ideas flow,” says Mark Avdalovic, one of a large number of lung disease researchers at UC Davis.

However, for lack of a building, Avdalovic and his colleagues cannot do the kind of “team science” they would like to do. Instead, they are scattered around the Davis and Sacramento campuses.

A $14.2 million economic stimulus grant from the federal government will solve this problem. The money will pay for the new Respiratory Diseases Center, to be built at the university’s California National Primate Research Center (west of Highway 113), where the resident monkeys, with lungs very similar to those in people, are ideal for lung research.

The project’s environmental review is under way (see details below), and officials are hoping to see the building completed by the fall of 2013.

The grant is from the National Center for Research Resources, part of the National Institutes of Health, and is UC Davis’ largest to date under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Altogether, UC Davis has received more than $100 million in stimulus funds for research facilities and projects.

The 20,000-square-foot Respiratory Diseases Center, with offices, laboratory space, animal holding areas and lab space for pulmonary function tests, will replace existing labs constructed at the primate center almost 30 years ago.

The center will not only provide a common space for common research, but will help with recruitment of new researchers, said Professor Dallas Hyde, director of the California National Primate Research Center.

Hyde is among the university’s lung disease researchers — some, like him, affiliated with the School of Veterinary Medicine, and others with the School of Medicine.

Among the questions they seek to answer are why some children get asthma and others do not, the role of infections and air pollution in causing asthma, and the causes of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD — the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States,

Surveys of human health show that events in the first year of life can have long-term effects on lung development, said Lisa Miller, an associate professor of anatomy, physiology and cell biology at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

“The nonhuman primate model is the ideal system for answering questions in lung development,” Miller said. “You can’t answer these questions just with studies in children.”

Avdalovic, associate clinical professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the UC Davis Health System, said monkey lungs and human lungs are especially similar in how they grow and heal, unlike those of mice and rats.

As with human lungs, monkey lungs continue to grow and develop for months after birth, while the immune system — thought to play an important role in asthma — is mostly established at birth, Miller explained. In contrast, mice and rats are born with fully grown lungs, while immune systems in mice and rats continue to develop after birth.

Avdalovic, Miller, Hyde and colleagues have found that exposure to a combination of dust mite, which causes allergies, and the pollutant ozone can cause long-lasting changes in the lung. That finding reinforces observations that children exposed to pollutants and allergens are more likely to have lung problems later in life.

By studying monkeys, the researchers can see what those changes are — and investigate how to prevent or treat them.

Avdalovic treats patients with COPD in the clinic and studies the disease in his lab. The disease seems to be caused when blood vessels in the lungs do not respond properly to injury, he said.

"Instead of new air sacs, you end up with holes in the lung," he said.

Avdalovic studies the genes involved in healing lungs in monkeys. He also takes samples of lung tissue from his human patients and grows them in a culture dish to see how well they recruit new blood vessels.

"When we see changes in genes in the animal, we can see whether those same genes are involved in patients. When we understand the target genes involved, the next step will be to ask whether we can promote gene function and prevent injury," Avdalovic said.

"We're making direct comparisons to human clinical studies of asthma and COPD," Hyde said.

Across the campus, work on lung diseases ranges from experiments in molecular biology and with cell cultures, through animal models to human clinical studies. The new building will enable scattered researchers to come together.

"The NIH is encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration, and having a group of us under one roof will enhance our collaboration," Miller said.

Environmental review

The environmental review starts with the tiered initial study, described as a preliminary environmental review, released June 30 for public comment. The comment period runs for 30 days, to 5 p.m. July 29.

The environmental process for the Respiratory Diseases Center is “tiered” because the process builds on the Davis campus’s overall environmental impact report, or EIR, that gained approval in 2003 with the university’s Long-Range Development Plan.

For the Respiratory Diseases Center’s environmental review, the university plans to focus on three areas: air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and hazards and hazardous materials.

The Respiratory Diseases Center tiered initial study and the Davis campus’s Long-Term Development Plan EIR are available online; copies are available for review at Administrative and Resource Management, 376 Mrak Hall; in the Shields Library reserves; and at the Davis library, 2801 Second St.

Comments should be mailed to Sid England, assistant vice chancellor, Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability,
Administrative and Resource Management, 376 Mrak Hall, University of California, 1 Shields Ave., Davis 95616; or e-mailed to environreview@ucdavis.edu.