Fernando Martinez, MD
By Caleb White | Date published: November 18, 2024
November Researcher Spotlight: Fernando Martinez, MD
Fernando Martinez, MD, the Joseph D. Early Chair in Biomedical Research, professor of medicine, vice chair for clinical and translational research, and academic chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care, moved with his family from Cuba to Georgia when he was 10 years old. He was encouraged by his father, a pediatrician, to pursue medicine and earned his medical degree at the University of Florida School of Medicine. From there, he completed his internship and internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and became interested in clinical research while completing a pulmonary fellowship at Boston University Pulmonary Center. “I realized that one of the advantages of pursuing an academic career with a strong investigative portfolio was that you could have an impact on health care that was much broader than assisting one patient at a time,” said Dr. Martinez, who also serves as executive director of the Department of Medicine Clinical Research Core and a scientific advisor for the Cancer Research Office. “It is one of the most incredible feelings when you are involved in a clinical study that takes several years and you see it bear tangible effects.”
Dr. Martinez eventually moved to Michigan where he served as a professor of internal medicine and associate chief for clinical research in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan Health System. There, he led several groundbreaking studies on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and interstitial lung disease (ILD) including a particular type of ILD called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF)—conditions that harm the lungs and make it difficult to breathe. With over 700 publications and nearly 14,000 citations, Dr. Martinez’s research has involved defining prognostic features, biological markers, diagnostic approaches, and innovative strategies for treating these diseases. He emphasized that an effective diagnostic approach greatly impacts the efficiency of therapies and patient care. “The approaches defined in our ILD studies have been incorporated into international guidelines addressing ILD diagnosis and therapy,” said Dr. Martinez. “Similarly, our investigative group advanced the approaches to diagnosis in COPD as well as defining the role of chronic macrolide therapy and lung volume reduction for advanced emphysema.”
More recently, his research has focused on adapting therapeutic approaches that have revolutionized cancer care, COPD, and ILD. He is currently the principal investigator on projects supported by the National Institutes of Health involving “precision” trials and genomic-based studies that strive to improve the diagnostic approach to fibrosing ILD, particularly IPF, by using genetic and molecular biomarkers. “These studies are intended to find how to better segregate specific patients into categories that are molecular, not just clinical, and how to better design therapies that are targeted to those individual patients,” said Dr. Martinez. “One study is targeting a specific mutation seen in one-quarter of IPF patients with a targeted therapy that costs a few dollars a month in contrast to the approved therapies, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. If the study has positive results, the field and our approach to patients will be revolutionized.”
Before coming to UMass Chan in 2024, Dr. Martinez served at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York as the chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and the Bruce Webster Professor of Medicine in the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine. He was also a practicing physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
We are grateful for Dr. Martinez’s leadership in the Department of Medicine and look forward to his continued research contributions.