Xinhui Wu, PhD

Research summary

Dr. Xinhui Wu’s research program focuses on the regenerative medicine on chronic pulmonary diseases, including bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Her work aims to characterize the disrupted lung development in BPD, and its hypothesized roles in lung repair. And in combination with multi-omics techniques, to understand the molecular mechanisms in health, disease, and injury, and thereby yield novel drug targets and stem cell potentials for further development.

• To establish a vascularized three-dimensional co-culture lung organoid platform, which allows to identify the cell-cell crosstalk between lung niche cells.
• To understand the mechanism that regulate lung progenitor cell self-renewal and differentiation in lung injury, repair, and response to therapy in BPD. Taken together, the long-term goal of her research is to discover novel therapeutic strategies that will mitigate lung dysfunction.

Research themes

• Regenerative medicine in lung repair
• Respiratory diseases: Bronchopulmonary dysplasia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Research interests

• Air pollution
• Alveolar niche cell-cell interactions
• Lung development
• Lung organoids
• Regenerative pharmacology
• Stem cell therapy

Research affiliations

• Principal investigator, Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM)

Research groups

• Biology of Breathing Theme (BoB)

Dr. Xinhui Wu received her PhD in molecular pharmacology from the University of Groningen. Her research focused on the regenerative pharmacology for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), where she gained expertise in building 3D models including lung organoids and precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) to model different pathological conditions in vitro and in vivo, to study the impact of cigarette smoking (CS) and diesel exhaust particles (DEP) in defective lung repair, particularly in the alveolar epithelium. She generated a transcriptomic-guided drug discovery strategy and discovered multiple potential drug targets including the analogues of PGE2 and PGI2 that corrected the defective lung repair in response to CS, which was published in a high impact journal – Science Advances in 2022.

Dr. Wu then pursued a postdoctoral training at the University of Groningen and Aston University supported by the Lung Foundation Netherlands (Longfonds). She continued her research in the field of lung regeneration, where she gained more expertise on lung endothelial biology and pathology in response to CS or DEP. 

Dr. Wu is now an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology at the University of Manitoba and a principal investigator at the Children's Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba.

Education

Postdoctoral researcher, University of Groningen, the Netherlands (2020-2024)

Sponsored researcher, Aston University, the United Kingdom (2022-2023)

Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular Pharmacology, University of Groningen, the Netherlands (2016-2020)

Master of science in Animal reproduction, Jilin University, China (2013-2016)

Bachelor of science in Animal science, Yanbian University, China (2009-2013)

Awards

NRS-SAB Best Paper Award, the Netherlands Respiratory Society (NRS), 2023

APSR-ERS Young Investigator Award, the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology & the European Respiratory Society (ERS), 2023

ERS Young Scientist Sponsorship, the European Respiratory Society (ERS), 2020

ATS International Trainee scholarship, the American Thoracic Society (ATS), 2018