Donna Davies has a PhD in Biochemistry and holds a Personal Chair at the University of Southampton, UK. She has pioneered the use of tissue engineering using airway tissue derived from volunteers with asthma or COPD as alternatives to using animal models of pulmonary disease.  More recently, she has also developed novel in vitro models of lung fibrosis for development of novel anti-fibrotic agents. Notable discoveries include demonstration of epithelial dysfunction in asthma and COPD, dissection of the function of the asthma susceptibility gene, ADAM33, and involvement of the epithelial mesenchymal tropic unit in asthma pathogenesis. She co-founded the University spin-out company, Synairgen, which has developed inhaled interferon-beta (SNG001) as a novel treatment for asthma and COPD exacerbations.