Laura Koth received a B.S. degree from UCLA in Biochemistry and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in 1994. She completed her Internal Residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and her Pulmonary/Critical Care fellowship at UCSF. She joined the UCSF Lung Biology Center faculty in 2003. Her research activities focus on the mechanisms of lung inflammation and macrophage activation. Her clinical interest centers on interstitial lung diseases and she co-directs the Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic at UCSF.

Research Interests

My clinical interest of interstitial lung diseases has guided my research direction, which involves the study of mechanisms of lung inflammation and fibrosis. My KO8 focuses on the role of the chemokine, MCP-1, in the regulation of the pro-fibrotic cytokine, TGFß1. Other areas of study include the role of TGFß1 in the regulation of macrophage activation and pulmonary surfactant homeostasis, as well as the characterization of macrophage activation states in different pulmonary diseases ranging from emphysema to tobacco-related interstitial lung diseases.

Selected Publications

L.L. Koth, M.W. Rodriguez, X.L. Berstein, S. Chan, X. Huang, I.F. Charo, B.J. Rollins, D.J. Erle. Aspergillus antigen induces robust Th2 cytokine production, inflammation, airway hyperreactivity and fibrosis in the absence of MCP-1 or CCR2. Respir Res, 2004 Sep; 15;5(1):12.

J.H. Lee, N. Kaminski, G. Dolganov, G. Grunig, L. Koth, C. Solomon, D.J. Erle, D. Sheppard. Interleukin-13 induces dramatically different transcriptional programs in three human airway cell types. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol, 2001 Oct; 25(4):474-85.

D.A. Kuperman, X.Z. Huang, L. Koth, Z. Zhu, J.A. Elias, D. Sheppard, D.J. Erle. Direct effects of interleukin-13 on epithelial cells cause airway hyperreactivity and mucus overproduction, two central features of asthma. Nat Med, 2002 Aug; 8(8): 885-9.

A. Barczak, M.W. Rodriquez, K. Hanspers, L.L. Koth, Y.C. Tai, B.M. Bolstad, T.P. Speed, D.J. Erle. Spotted long oligonucleotide arrays for human gene expression analysis. Genome Res. 2003 Jul;13(7):1775-85.

L. Koth, M. Rodriguez, X.Z. Huang, D.J. Erle. Effects of MCP-1 deletion on lung inflammation, airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) and fibrosis. Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 2002 April; 165 (8) A448.

L.L. Koth, D.G. Morris, Y. Wang, D. Sheppard, S. Hawgood, D.J. Erle. The integrin subunit ß6 (Itgb6) is required for normal mouse lung surfactant homeostasis. Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 2003 April; 167(7) A288.

L. Koth, T. E. King, Jr. Pulmonary Vasculitis. In: Bone’s Atlas of Pulmonary Medicine, ed. Crapo JD. Pennsylvania: Current Medicine LLC [in press]