Research Laboratories - Department of Internal Medicine

Research Laboratories

The Department of Internal Medicine at the VCU Medical Center is committed to advancing medicine through research. We are proud to have accomplished research faculty who are supported with a strong research infrastructure. You’ll find more information about our active research laboratories below.

Sime Laboratory

Welcome to the Sime Laboratory. We invite you to learn more about us from this web site and please feel free to contact us anytime. We would be pleased to hear from you.

Our laboratory focuses on identifying pathogenetic mechanisms underlying lung disease so that we can speed the identification and development of new and exciting therapeutics. Diseases we study include lung scarring (fibrosis) and smoke and other toxicant induced lung inflammatory diseases such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema (COPD).

Translational Lung Cancer Research Group (TLCaRG)

Welcome to the Translational Lung Cancer Research Group (TLCaRG). Please feel to contact us for any info about our members and the research we conduct. We would be pleased to hear from you.

The TLCaRG focuses its research on discovering new strategies for lung cancer detection and the development of RNA based therapeutics. Our research also investigates the role of immunotherapy as an approach for treating lung cancer. Additional areas of investigation include the role of the microbiome in lung cancer pathogenesis and the development of clinically informative biomarkers in the diagnosis and management of malignant pleural disease, lung cancer associated cachexia and COPD.

Sickle Cell Disease Research Program

Over the course of three decades, the Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Program at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) under the direction of Wally R Smith, MD, Florence Neal Cooper Smith Professor of SCD, has helped lead the national charge for a cure for SCD. By all measures, VCU has become a top 10 Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center in America, caring for nearly 900 children and adults statewide. Further, VCU has helped usher in the dramatic change of SCD from a disease causing death in childhood to one where two-thirds of patients are now adults. (Link coming soon)

Winn Lab

The Winn Lab goals are to understand the molecular basis of signaling pathways and mechanisms by which oncogenes and tumor suppressors regulate tumor initiation and tumor progression in animal and human models of lung cancer. The studies, using cutting edge techniques, are translational in nature to garner information in hopes to identify novel lung cancer biomarkers to develop new therapeutic treatments. In addition to the basic science, the lab is also interested in racial disparities surrounding lung cancer by defining the genetic, proteomic, and metabolomic differences among various racial/ethnic groups with differing survival outcomes related to lung cancer.