Fernando D Martinez MD

Director, BIO5 Institute
Director, Arizona Respiratory Center
Swift-McNear Professor of Pediatrics
Regents' Professor

Collaborations Hide Collaborations

Additional Information Hide Additional Information

Faculty Homepage

Research Interests

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic childhood illness. Viral respiratory illnesses plague infants, and much of the chronic pulmonary dysfunction that occurs in adults has its origins in these childhood illnesses. Dr. Martinez combines pediatric clinical training with epidemiology, genetic, physiologic, and immunobiologic approaches to understanding these diseases.

He has published 160 original research papers, many in collaboration with investigators from around the world, authored 20 book chapters and co-edited two books. He is a frequent presenter at national and international meetings, and was recently invited to give the J. Amberson Lecture at the international meeting of the American Thoracic Society in 2008. This is the premier honor bestowed by this national society in recognizing the significant contributions of the invitee to advancing understanding of pulmonary diseases.

Some of Dr. Martinez’s studies in the mid-1990s started a process that has given him a major policy voice with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). One of his publications essentially changed the climate and nature of funding for epidemiologic research at the NHLBI.

Dr. Martinez has expanded his basic research program to address the complex relation of genetic variation to human disease. For this purpose, he closely collaborates with two major interdisciplinary training programs at the university, the Human Genes and Environment Research (Huger) and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT), and with researchers at the Arizona Genomics Institute and Arizona Research Laboratories.

He and his colleagues at the Arizona Respiratory Center also have begun to elucidate the interactions between gene variants and environmental factors that provide critical influences on asthma development. For this purpose, members of the Center are currently studying exposure to germs in homes of asthma patients in collaboration with researchers at the UA’s Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; exposure to desert molds together with investigators in the Division of Plant Pathology and Microbiology in the same College; and exposure to arsenic in water with experts from the College of Pharmacy and the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center.

Dr. Martinez is the principal investigator on the UA portion of the NIH’s National Children’s Study, a major effort to investigate the interaction of genes and the environment on children’s health. The UA’s Department of Pediatrics was recently awarded a $44 million, six-year contract to participate in the study, which includes study locations in Pinal and Apache counties and a Maricopa county option. These location studies are led by an interdisciplinary team of investigators from the UA Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Medicine, and Public Health.

Selected Publications

Koppelman GH, Meyers DA, Howard TD, Zheng SL, Hawkins GA, Ampleford EJ, Xu J, Koning H, Bruinenberg M, Nolte IM, van Diemen CC, Boezen HM, Timens W, Whittaker PA, Stine OC, Barton SJ, Holloway JW, Hol. Sep 2009. Identification of PCDH1 as a Novel Susceptibility Gene for Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness. Am J Respir Crit Care Med,2009 Sep 3;

Guerra S, Sherrill DL, Venker C, Ceccato CM, Halonen M, Martinez FD. Oct 2009. Chronic bronchitis before age 50 years predicts incident airflow limitation and mortality risk. Thorax, 64:894-900

Martinez FD. May 2009. The origins of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in early life. Proc Am Thorac Soc, 6:272-7

Martinez FD. Mar 2009. Managing childhood asthma: challenge of preventing exacerbations. Pediatrics, 123 Suppl 3:S146-50