About the Authors

Peter A. Sloane

Contributed equally to this work with: Peter A. Sloane, Suresh Shastry

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Suresh Shastry

Contributed equally to this work with: Peter A. Sloane, Suresh Shastry

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Andrew Wilhelm

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Clifford Courville

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Li Ping Tang

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Kyle Backer

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Elina Levin

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

S. Vamsee Raju

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Yao Li

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Marina Mazur

Affiliation Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Suzanne Byan-Parker

Affiliation Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

William Grizzle

Affiliation Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Eric J. Sorscher

Affiliations Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Mark T. Dransfield

Affiliations Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, UAB Lung Health Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Steven M. Rowe

smrowe@uab.edu

Affiliations Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Department of Pediatrics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, UAB Lung Health Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dr. Rowe served as a consultant for Vertex Pharmaceuticals for the design of CF clinical trials and also served as site PI for CF Clinical Trials sponsored by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Dransfield has served on COPD-related advisory boards for Forest, GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim. Dr. Dransfield has served as site PI for contracted COPD clinical trials sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: PAS EJS MTD SMR. Performed the experiments: PAS SS AW CC LPT KB EL SVR YL MM SBP WG MTD SMR. Analyzed the data: PAS SS CC EL SVR YL SBP WG EJS MTD SMR LPT. Wrote the paper: PAS MTD SMR. Supervised the project: MTD SMR.