About

Dr. Boucher attended Yale University for his undergraduate education and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons for medical school. Following a two-year internship/residency at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, he joined the India Health Service and was a family medicine physician in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, and San Ildefonso, New Mexico. Dr. Boucher performed his respiratory training at McGill, notably under the tutelage of Dr. James Hogg in the Meakins-Christie Laboratories. After three years of training in Montreal, he joined the faculty of the Adult Pulmonary Medicine Division at The University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has remained there for 43 years, studying the pathogenesis of cystic fibrosis and, more recently, the broad spectrum of muco-obstructive lung diseases. He is presently Director of the Marsico Lung Institute/UNC CF Research Center.

Research Focus

Dr. Boucher has primarily studied the normal physiology of pulmonary surface liquid homeostasis and how these systems fail in lung diseases, e.g., cystic fibrosis (CF). This airways disease research has focused on the ion channels responsible for transepithelial ion transport, e.g., the epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC), CFTR, and the calcium-activated Cl- channel (CaCC, including TMEM16a), the extracellular nucleotide/nucleoside regulatory system that controls the relative activities of the absorptive (ENaC) vs. secretory (CFTR, CaCC) channels, and the mucins that form “mucus.” The research work encompasses experimental systems, including epithelial cell culture systems, mouse models of lung disease, mathematical models (the “virtual lung”) to identify key pathogenetic pathways, in vivo human investigations, including studies of mucus concentrations/composition, and therapies for major human lung diseases. Notably, these research technologies have been focused on the early pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of CF.