
Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
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Tissue Regeneration, Fibrosis and Tumor Microenvironment
To transform the lives of patients by discovering best-in-class medicines for fibrotic diseases and cancer
We are located in the Department of Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated teaching Hospital in Boston. The central mission of the Lagares Laboratory is to perform innovative and cutting-edge research to unravel the biological mechanisms that regulate tissue repair and regeneration, fibrosis (scarring) and tumor growth and metastasis. Human fibrotic diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, systemic sclerosis, liver cirrhosis, progressive kidney disease and desmoplastic tumors cause healthcare costs reaching $10 billions per year. We investigate the biology of fibrosis and cancer with an implicit mission to develop novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of these lethal diseases. To achieve this goal, the Lagares Laboratory utilizes cutting edge molecular biology techniques, new bioengineering assays, genetic manipulation of mice, animal modeling of disease, and translational studies in humans. The Lagares Laboratory is a fertile training ground for the next generation of scientists and physician-scientists.
David Lagares, PhD is a scientist-entrepreneur at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. A native of Madrid, Spain, he earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry and medical sciences at the Centre for Molecular Biology “Severo Ochoa” in 2012. Dr. Lagares completed his postdoctoral training in biomedical research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School studying molecular mechanisms associated with tissue injury, fibrosis and regeneration. Since 2014, he is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases and the Division of Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2016, he was appointed Director of the Matrix and Mechanobiology Program at the MGH Fibrosis Research Center, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical in 2018. His research laboratory investigates cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate tissue repair, fibrosis and tumor microenvironment, with an emphasis on the biochemical and biomechanical drivers of fibroblast recruitment and activation. Seminal work from his laboratory include the identification of the ADAM10-sEphrin-B2 pathway in lung injury and fibrosis (Lagares, D Nature Medicine) and the use of BH3 mimetic drugs to induce myofibroblast apoptosis and reversion of established fibrosis in the autoimmune fibrotic disease of scleroderma (Lagares, D Science Translational Medicine). Recently, his laboratory has identified durotaxis (stiffness-directed migration) as a major mechanism promoting cancer metastasis in fibrotic tumors. He is a recipient of multiple career awards from the National Institutes of Health and the American Thoracic Society. He is also a Co-Founder of Mediar Therapeutics and Zenon Biotech, biotech companies developing innovative anti-fibrotic therapies.
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