Prof Dr Dr Robert Bals
About
The research focus of Prof. Bals' group is on inflammatory, infectious and neoplastic lung diseases such as asthma, COPD, cancer or pneumonia. The Bals group is investigating the mechanisms by which the lung responds to harmful environmental agents and how these mechanisms are involved in the development and progression of disease in order to improve the care of patients with lung disease. Clinical investigations of these target diseases are also being conducted and the Bals group has biobanks of blood and tissue samples.
The overall goal of Prof. Bals' work is to develop innovative therapies for infectious, degenerative or neoplastic diseases of the lung based on cell biology, drug development and clinical science.
Research areas of the Bals group:
- Cell biology of the lung: assay development to find new targets and drugs.
- Preclinical disease models: human cell models and animal models are used to study disease processes, identify targets and search for new drugs
- Clinical investigation: biospecimens from patients are used to validate disease mechanisms in biomarker studies. Successful candidates are transferred to clinical trials