Steven Proper, DO, PhD's, research interests broadly surround the crossroads of airway exposures to environmental toxicants and development of the immune system; essentially, how our environment, epithelial cells and immune systems interact during development to confer disease risk, especially in allergic airway disease. Broadly, he hopes to study how the airway epithelium contributes to immunologic function and how this knowledge can direct new therapies for prevention and treatment of diseases like asthma.
For his PhD thesis, he studied the role of lung epithelial-specific hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) in lung development, as well as their role in acute/allergic lung injury from exposure to cobalt and ovalbumin (asthma model), respectively. His work so far has shown that epithelial hypoxia signaling contributes to the immune response and overall pathogenesis of lung inflammation, and likely contributes to respiratory diseases such as asthma.