Bikun Yang

Dr. Yimu Yang is an Research Assistant Professor at the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He obtained a Ph.D. in physiology from Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Japan. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, in 2009 he joined to. Eric Schmidt’s laboratory to study the importance of the endothelial glycocalyx (a heparan sulfate-enriched endovascular layer) on lung injury.

Dr. Yang’s work has focused on pulmonary endothelial glycocalyx reconstitution after acute lung injury. He developed a novel intravital microscopy method to measure pulmonary endothelial glycocalyx thickness in a living animal. Recently, he expanded his interest in glycosaminoglycan degradation to chronic lung diseases, such as lung fibrosis. He was awarded a Discovery Award from the Department of Defense entitled “Heparanase activates pulmonary fibroblasts during idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis”. His work continues to investigate the importance of heparan sulfate on pulmonary fibroblast biology and lung fibrosis.