Sally Wenzel

Wenzel was born to father Fred Wenzel in Inverness, Florida and attended Citrus High School.[1] In her senior year, she won the National Merit scholarship, Florida Regents Merit Certificate, Reader's Digest Award, and the Bausch & Lomb Science Award.[2] She was also the recipient of Citrus High School's Outstanding Student Award after recording a perfect score in the college placement tests.[1] Upon graduating high school, Wenzel attended the University of Florida for her undergraduate and medical degrees and completed her residency in internal medicine at Wake Forest University.[3]

Upon completing her fellowship, Wenzel accepted a position at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and with the American Thoracic Society (ATS). As a result of her academic research, she was elected a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology.[4] In 2010, her research project "Asthma Phenotypes: A Prelude to Mechanistic Insights on Disease Pathogenesis" earned her the ATS Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments.[5]

Wenzel eventually left the University of Colorado to accept a professorship position at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. While there, Wenzel and Samuel Yousem were the first to identify asthmatic granulomatosis which is a subset of severe asthma "with small-airway changes consistent with asthma but also with interstitial nonnecrotizing granulomas."[6] In 2016, she was the first woman honored with the Breathing for Life Award from the American Thoracic Society for her "advocacy for women in science and mentoring of young scientists."[7] The following year, she was the recipient of the European Respiratory Society's Presidential Award which "recognizes outstanding contributions to the strengthening of respiratory medicine worldwide."[8]

Wenzel continued her research into the possible pathway leading to asthma exacerbation, which accumulated in a 2017 study published in the journal Cell. Alongside Valerian Kagan and Hulya Bayir, Wenzel described, for the first time, a cell-death pathway that can destroy healthy cells, resulting in tissue and organ damage. They found that the protein PEBP1 "serves as the pathway warden in controlling whether a certain enzyme (15LO) ends up making a fat molecule or lipid (OOH-PEs) in such volumes that they signal the activation of the cell-death process."[9] In 2018, Wenzel was appointed the Chair of Environmental and Occupational Health in the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.[10] She was also the recipient of the Ladies Hospital Aid Society Trailblazer award for her "studies of severe asthma, and asthma phenotypes."[11] While serving in the role as Chair of Environmental and Occupational Health, Wenzel became an investigator in the clinical trial for the new biologic drug dupilumab.[12]

• The pathobiology of asthma: implications for treatment
• Wenzel, Sally E.; Chipps, Bradley E.; Rasouliyan, Lawrence; Borish, Larry; Haselkorn, Tmirah; Lee, June H. (2007-12-01). "Risk Factors Associated With Persistent Airflow Limitation in Severe or Difficult-to-Treat Asthma: Insights From the TENOR Study". Chest. 132 (6): 1882–1889. doi:10.1378/chest.07-0713. ISSN 0012-3692. PMID 18079222.

Wenzel is married to Dana Morganroth, the founding director of the Pittsburgh Freethought Community.[13]

Sally Wenzel publications indexed by Google Scholar