PUR1900 Clinical Advisory Board

William J. Calhoun, MD
Chair - PUR1900 Clinical Advisory Board

Dr. Calhoun earned his medical degree at Hershey Medical Center, Pennsylvania State University, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He completed his fellowship in Pulmonary Diseases at the University of Vermont and his fellowship in Allergy – Clinical Immunology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He holds a certificate in Medical and Health Care Management from Rice University Jesse Jones School of Business in Houston, Texas. ...see more

Dr. Calhoun was a founding member of the US Severe Asthma Research Program, a member of the US Asthma Clinical Research Network, and is an experienced clinical trialist. He served on, and then chaired, the Pulmonary Allergy Drug Advisory Committee for the US FDA, and now serves ad hoc on many FDA Advisory Committees. He was a standing member of the NIH IRAP study section and has served ad hoc on other NIH study sections. He has chaired many NIH study sections in pulmonary diseases. He is a member of the American Thoracic Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy, & Immunology (AAAAI), the American College of Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology (ACAAI), the American College of Physicians (ACP), and the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP).

Dr. Calhoun has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and is currently section editor of Current Allergy and Asthma Reports. He also serves as a journal reviewer for top tier journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Physiology, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Chest. He has published over 180 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

His clinical and research interests include the causes and mechanisms of severe asthma and immunologic lung diseases and novel therapeutic approaches for these conditions.
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Ritesh Agarwal, MD, PM

Ritesh Agarwal, MD, DM, was born and educated in Chennai (India). He completed his medical school (MBBS) in 1998 from Stanley Medical College and joined the Residency Program in Internal Medicine at Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh in 1998. Subsequently, he completed his Fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine from the same Institute in 2004. ...see more He is currently working as a Professor in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India. His primary research area is allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. He also maintains keen interest in interventional pulmonology and meta-analysis.

Dr. Agarwal has more than 425 publications to his credit. He has written several chapters in national and international books. He is also co-author of two books (Oxygen Therapy, Textbook of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine). He was awarded the ICMR Kamal Satbir Award for the year 2009, the NASI-Scopus Young Scientist Award (Medicine category) for the year 2011, and the ICMR Shakuntala Amir Chand Award for the year 2012 for his work in the field of allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis.

Dr. Agarwal is Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Chest Physicians, Asian Pacific Society of Respirology, Indian Chest Society, Royal College of Physicians of Glasgow, and Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Specialties: Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, interventional pulmonology, meta-analysis
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Mario Castro, MD, MPH

Mario Castro, MD, MPH, received his medical degree from the University of Missouri in 1988 and his Master’s in Public Health from the St. Louis University School of Public Health in 1998. He is the Alan A. and Edith L. Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He is the Director of the Asthma and Airway Translational Research Unit (AATRU) at Washington University School of Medicine. ...see more

Dr. Castro's translational research projects are focused on the pathogenesis of asthma and clinical trials in the management of asthma, especially severe asthma. Dr. Castro is the lead investigator for two major asthma networks – the NIH AsthmaNet and the ALA Asthma Clinical Research Center (ACRC) network – which are studying better ways to treat asthma. He chairs the Protocol Committee for ACRC. He is also studying what makes severe asthma different from milder forms (Severe Asthma Research Program [SARP]) and chairs the Imaging and Quality Control Committees for SARP. He is the co-Principal investigator of the PCORI-funded D&I study of African American children with asthma evaluating if symptom-based asthma management by community pediatricians is superior to guideline-based asthma management and how to implement such an approach in practice. In addition, he is following children from very early in life and looking at how their genetic, biologic, and immune responses as well as their environment are coming together to cause some of them to develop asthma (NIH RSV Bronchiolitis in Early Life [RBEL] study). Dr. Castro's translational work has been complimented by multiple clinical trials evaluating new and existing therapies in the treatment of asthma, especially severe asthma. His major contribution to the treatment of severe asthma has been in the development of bronchial thermoplasty, a novel therapy to reduce airway smooth muscle, and anti-IL5 therapy for severe eosinophilic asthma. Dr. Castro has led over 80+ clinical and translational single and multicenter trials in our AATRU and has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and chapters.
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Jonathan Corren, MD

Jonathan Corren, MD, has been a faculty member in the departments of Medicine and Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles since 1991. He is currently medical director of a private practice in Allergy/Immunology and director of a clinical research site which focusses upon severe asthma, chronic rhinosinusitis, allergy immunotherapy, immunodeficiencies, and allergic skin diseases and is ...see more currently project chair for a multi-center trial evaluating the immunologic and clinical effects of allergen-specific immunotherapy combined with an inhibitor of thymic stromic lymphopoietin. He is also a consultant regarding clinical study design with multiple pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Genentech, Novartis, Regeneron, and Sanofi. He previously served as Director of the Allergy/Immunology Fellowship program, Chief of Clinical Services in Allergy/Immunology, and Co-Head of the Nasal and Sinus Disease Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a BA in Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and medical degree from the University of California, San Diego. He completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Southern California/Los Angeles County Medical Center, residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center, and fellowship in Allergy/Immunology at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, followed by an appointment at National Jewish Center as an Instructor in Medicine and research scientist. His research papers regarding the use of biologic medications in severe asthma have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and Chest. He is an active member of the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology....see less

David Denning, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedsci

David Denning is an infectious diseases clinician with expertise in fungal diseases. He trained at Guys Hospital, London and as a young doctor also in London (University College and Northwick Park hospitals), Glasgow, and Stanford, California. He has been researching and caring for patients with aspergillosis since 1985 and retired as a clinician in 2020. ...see more

He was the founding Director of the UK’s National Aspergillosis Centre (2009-2020). He has published more than 600 papers and book chapters. He has successfully led many major international collaborative science, diagnostic, and treatment projects and clinical guidelines, with subsequent publication in Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Lancet. He is heavily involved in postgraduate teaching and lectures worldwide. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Mycology Reference Centre in Manchester (2009), which grew out of the Fungal Testing Laboratory he founded in 1991. His work has been cited over 75,000 times (Google scholar H-index 119). He is the Founder of 2 University spinout biotechnology companies – F2G Ltd. and Myconostica Ltd. He chairs the Editorial Board of the Aspergillus Website (1998-present) (www.aspergillus.org.uk) of which ~1 million pages are read monthly. He leads LIFE (Leading International Fungal Education) (www.LIFE-Worldwide.org) and is President of the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (http://www.GAFFI.org). He co-chairs the alternate year Advances Against Aspergillosis meetings. He is a member of the SEARO Task Force on AMR.
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Cendrine Godet, MD

Cendrine Godet, MD, received her medical degree from the University of Poitiers, France and is a doctor of infectious diseases and pulmonary medicine at Poitiers University Hospital, France, coordinator of the French National Board for chronic fungal infection, and secretary of the European CPAnet Board for chronic pulmonary aspergillosis. ...see more

Dr. Godet's professional experience during these last 15 years has been devoted to the clinical aspects of pulmonary involvement in immune and infectious diseases and, more recently, lung aspergillosis infection. During this time, however, one of her goals was also to develop collaborations with several groups involved in pulmonary infection and diffuse lung diseases in immunocompromised patients (Pr A. Bergeron, hôpital Saint Louis, Paris; Pr J. Cadranel, Hôpital Tenon, Paris; Pr R. Herbrecht, Hôpital Strasbourg, France).

Dr. Godet most recently has been working on pulmonary opportunistic infections observed in non IDS patients with Pr F. Roblot (CHU Poitiers, France). More specifically, she has analyzed the underlying diseases and prognostic factors associated with pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia in immunocompromised HIV-negative patients. She also worked on the imaging diagnosis of pulmonary complications in mildly and immunocompromised patients, mainly as concerns fungal infections such as aspergillus, which is particularly problematic in patients with neutropenia. This was further complemented with work on various HRCT manifestations of obliterative bronchiolitis, which is an important cause of mortality and morbidity in transplant recipients (Dr C. Beigelman [Hôpital La Pitiè-Salpétrière, Paris] and Pr A. Bergeron [hôpital Saint Louis, Paris]).

Dr. Godet is currently working on medical strategy using antifungal inhalation treatment (liposomal amphothericin B), in the reduction of allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) exacerbations (PHRC 2013).
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Richard B. Moss, MD

Richard B. Moss, MD, is former chief of the Pediatric Pulmonary and Allergy Divisions and allergy-immunology and pulmonary fellowship training programs director at Stanford University. He was educated at Columbia (BA), SUNY Downstate (MD), Northwestern/Children’s Memorial Hospital (pediatrics residency) and Stanford (allergy-immunology, pulmonology fellowships). He was Director of the Cystic Fibrosis Center at Stanford ...see more (allergy-immunology, pulmonology fellowships). He was Director of the Cystic Fibrosis Center at Stanford (1991-2009) and site principal investigator for the Cystic Fibrosis Therapeutics Development Network (1999-2009), where he was also inaugural Chair of the Protocol Review Committee. He currently is a member of Stanford’s Child Health Research Institute, serves on the Pediatric Mentoring Program at Stanford, the Executive Committee of Stanford's NIH clinical research program (Spectrum Child Health), and the Stanford IRB. Dr. Moss has reviewed and consulted for the NIH, CFF, national and international foundations, peer-review journals, and biopharmaceutical companies. His research interests include pathogenesis, outcome measures, and treatment of chronic airway diseases of childhood. Recent work has focused on allergic fungal lung disease. ...see less

Russell A. Settipane, MD, FACAAI, FAAAAI, FACCP

Russell A. Settipane, MD, FACAAI, FAAAAI, FACCP is a clinical professor of medicine at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University, Providence, RI and provides clinical services in allergy-immunology at the Middletown and East Providence locations of the Allergy & Asthma Centers of RI. He attended New York Medical College, completed a residency program in internal medicine at Brown Medical School, and completed fellowship training in Allergy ...see more and Immunology at Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation in La Jolla, CA. Dr. Settipane has published over 80 scientific articles and book chapters on allergy, asthma, and immunology topics. In addition, he serves as associate editor for two journals, Allergy and Asthma Proceedings and the Journal of Precision Respiratory Medicine; he also serves as medical director of two conferences, the Eastern Allergy Conference and Eastern Pulmonary Conference....see less

David A. Stevens, MD

David A. Stevens, MD, is Professor (Emeritus) of Medicine (tenured, 1978), Stanford University Medical School. He is President of the California Institute for Medical Research, San Jose and Principal Investigator of its Infectious Disease Research Laboratory. ...see more

He graduated from Cornell University and the Univ. of Rochester Medical School and did his internship and residencies at the Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison and the Univ. of California, Los Angeles. He has served at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, and was a Fellow in Infectious Diseases at Stanford.

He is the author of over 700 full articles, editorials, and book chapters (largely in mycology) and an approximately equal number of abstracts, and has served on the editorial boards of several journals. He was the 1999 recipient of the Rhoda Benham Medal from the Medical Mycology Society of the Americas, the 2006 recipient in Paris of the Lucille Georg Medal from the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology, and the 2006 recipient of the Charles E. Smith Memorial Award from the Coccidioidomycosis Study Group.

A newly discovered bacterium has been named in his honor (Halomonas stevensii), in recognition of his contributions to the discovery of new species in this genus.

He was Project Leader of the Opportunistic Mycoses Section, and then the Aspergillosis Section, of the NIAID Mycoses Study Group (National Institutes of Health multicenter clinical trials group), 1990-2000. He was chair of the committee writing the first Practice Guidelines on Aspergillosis for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and has later served on this committee as well as the committee writing the Practice Guidelines on Coccidioidomycosis.

He has delivered 6 endowed, "named", or keynote lectureships on 3 continents, and was voted by his peers to "Best Doctors in America", "Best Doctors", "America's Top Doctors", "Guide to America's Top Physicians" and "Top Doctor, The Leading Physicians of the World", and to Chair, Mycology Division, American Society for Microbiology. Twelve of his former trainees are full professors in the full-time faculty of medical schools, and others are at other ranks of the professoriate, clinical faculty, hospital chiefs of infectious diseases, directors of clinical microbiology laboratories, full-time laboratory researchers at national laboratories or research institutes, or clinicians. Three of his former fellows have also been elected Chairs of the Mycology Division, American Society for Microbiology.

He is a member (emeritus) of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has been elected to 3 Fellowships: the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Academy of Microbiology. He is a Co-Organizer of the biennial Advances Against Aspergillosis international meetings.

Research Interests: Dr. Stevens' group studies the biology, pathogenesis, immunology, epidemiology, and therapy of fungal infections.
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Peter Wark, BMed, PhD, FRACP, FThorSoc

Peter Wark, BMed, PhD, FRACP, FThorSoc, is a senior staff specialist in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle and a conjoint Professor with the University of Newcastle. He is a senior investigator with the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs at the Hunter Medical Research Institute. He is a chief investigator in the NHMRC Centre of Excellence in Severe Asthma. ...see more

His research interests are airway inflammation in the context of chronic airways disease, innate immunity, and the role of infection in chronic airways disease. His group has developed expertise in identifying respiratory viruses in airway secretions and developing an in vitro cell culture model of the airway epithelium that is used to model the effect of infection and inflammation. His research focuses upon factors that increase susceptibility to virus infection in asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, and bronchiectasis, and characterizing airway inflammation and innate immune responses in chronic airways disease and applying this to clinical care, as well as the development of precise individualized management strategies.

He is the center director for the John Hunter Adult Cystic Fibrosis clinic that manages over 100 adult patients with CF in the context of a multidisciplinary team. He works in the severe asthma clinic as well as in general respiratory clinics at John Hunter Hospital and runs indigenous outreach clinics at Narrabri and Moree. He is chairperson for the Hunter New England Local Hospital network respiratory stream, responsible for the provision of respiratory services throughout the Hunter New England area, with a catchment population of 840,000. He is a board member of Cystic Fibrosis Australia.

Peter qualified as a Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Newcastle, Australia in 1991 and qualified as a specialist in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine as a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1999.

From 2001-2005 he was a post-doctoral research fellow under an NHMRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Travelling Fellowship at the University of Southampton and University College London, under the supervision of Professors Stephen Holgate, Donna Davies, and Sebastian Johnston.

From 1998-2001 he completed a PhD under the supervision of Professors Peter Gibson and Michael Hensley at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

He was a member of the TSANZ executive board and chairman of the clinical care and resources subcommittee from 2011 to 2018. He was a board member of the National Asthma Council of Australia from 2011 to 2014.
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Michael E Wechsler, MD MMSc

Michael E. Wechsler, MD MMSc, is Director of the National Jewish Health (NJH)/Cohen Family Asthma Institute and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at NJH in Denver. Professor Wechsler's research focuses on clinical and translational asthma with emphasis on clinical trials in asthma, novel asthma therapies, bronchial thermoplasty, asthma pharmacogenomics, and management of ...see more eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Churg-Strauss Syndrome, CSS). He has led studies focusing on novel biologic agents for asthma and related diseases, including benralizumab, dupilumab, mepolizumab, and reslizumab. He has published more than 175 peer-reviewed manuscripts relating to asthma, CSS, and eosinophilic lung diseases. He is a member of the Steering Committee and site Principal Investigator of the NIH-sponsored Asthma Clinical Research Network (ACRN, now called AsthmaNet), a multicenter asthma clinical trials consortium, and of the Precision Intervention in Severe/Exacerbating Asthma (PRECISE) network. A member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, he has participated in many different task forces related to the study of eosinophilic lung diseases that were sponsored by the NIH, the FDA, the European Respiratory Society, and the International Eosinophil Society.

Dr. Wechsler received AB and MMSc degrees from Harvard University in Boston and an MD degree from McGill University in Montreal. He completed medical training at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and as part of the Harvard Combined Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship Training Program.
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Rusty Clayton, DO
Strategic Advisor and Clinical Programs Medical Director

Dr. Clayton leverages over 15 years of executive experience in pharmaceutical, biologics, and medical device development and commercialization as a consultant in clinical development, medical affairs, and regulatory affairs. Prior to becoming a consultant, Dr. Clayton was the ...see more chief medical officer at Alcresta Therapeutics, a medical device company. While at Alcresta, Dr. Clayton led clinical development and medical affairs, overseeing the design and execution of pivotal clinical studies as well as developing a medical affairs capability in support of a new product launch. Prior to Alcresta Therapeutics, Dr. Clayton was the senior vice president of research and development at Discovery Labs, a pharmaceutical and medical device company, where he led the scientific and regulatory efforts leading to the marketing authorization of Discovery’s first product. Dr. Clayton is a board certified pediatric pulmonologist who practiced at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia prior to beginning his career in the pharmaceutical, biologics, and medical device industry. Dr. Clayton graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. ...see less