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>>THERESA BIERER: One of the things that makes NAU unique is the high degree of student participation
in the laboratory. Our first story examines some of the student research that has health
care applications.
>>JEFF LEID: One of the diseases we work on in our lab right now is called 'chronic rhinosinusitis,'
and here you can see the endoscope of a healthy sinus. You can see that it's fairly opaque,
doesn't look like there's any disease there.
>>BIERER: Dr. Jeff Lead and the students in his lab are studying chronic rhinosinusitis,
or CRS. It's characterized by the inflammation of the sinuses from infection, allergies and
autoimmune issues and lasting at least 12 weeks.
>>STACY PARMENTER: This is a very important disease, it has a lot of clinical relevance
to what we're doing here because over 16 percent of the U.S. population suffers from chronic
rhinosinusitis. And it costs the U.S. about $6 billion annually in physician visits, surgeries…
>>BIERER: Parmenter is studying the immune system as it relates to CRS and how regulating
certain genes could affect the immune response.
>>PARMENTER: Right now I am focusing on 'Haemophilus Influenza' and 'Streptococcus Pneumonia' and
I would like to broaden that because these polymicrobial communities are very important
to the disease.
>>BIERER: There is still a lot to be learned about chronic rhinosinusitis and how to treat
it. Emily Cope's research includes the effects of cigarette smoke on the sinuses and how
exposure promotes mucus and leads to increased bacterial colonization.
>>COPE: People already know smoking is bad. With this research we can really, um, really
send a message out to people who are exposed to smoke, why their CRS is so bad.
>>BIERER: Cope calls this lab's research on community virulence "ground breaking."
>>COPE: Nobody's ever looked at it before. People think of disease and they think one
organism causes one disease. But here we have a disease like chronic rhinosinusitis, which
is caused by complex communities of micro organisms…
>>BIERER: Cope would like to have her own lab one day where she would continue her research
and teach. Parmenter is going into the medical field possibly as a physician assistant, where
she plans to increase communication between researchers and physicians. These graduate
students credit Jeff Leid for encouraging their research as undergraduates at Northern
Arizona University, an opportunity rarely afforded younger students.
>>LEID: If you're an undergraduate who wants to go to medical school, dental school, vet
school, or going to graduate school in biomedical sciences it's a training I think really no
one beats us at all in the state and probably anywhere in the Southwest. We'd be one of
the best schools around for these types of things.
>>BIERER: Leid says students learn a lot in the classroom but their understanding of microbiology,
the human immune system and diseases like chronic rhinosinusitis is much more complete
when complimented by work in the lab.
Research on these pathogens is ongoing.