Snuffing the Sniffles
Wash U researchers working on NIH-funded $8 million grant to study asthma and allergic diseases
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are working on an $8 million grant funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the role of the barrier functions of the skin, gut and airway in asthma and allergic diseases. Understanding the role of the epithelial cells in these tissues may help prevent and treat respiratory illnesses, they say.
“The epithelial cells are critical for forming a barrier between the organism and its environment,” said Michael J. Holtzman, MD, of the Selma and Herman Seldin Professor of Medicine and principal investigator of the study. “The reaction of these cells to the environment can determine whether the host develops a normal immune response or an inflammatory disease process. We want to figure out how these reactions might move in a helpful direction and provide protection against the environment or in a harmful direction, leading to inflammatory diseases such as asthma.”
Specifically, the grant supports three projects:
· An investigation of how airway epithelial cells use proteins, “interferons,” to protect against viral infection. Holtzman and his colleagues demonstrated that viral infections could lead to the development of asthma. The team is now developing methods to enhance the efficiency of the interferon system as a means to protect against respiratory viruses and prevent the development of asthma.
· A study of how airway epithelial cells get converted to overproduce mucus in the airways, a major cause of illness and death in patients with asthma and allergic disease. The researchers learned that special proteins involved with autophagy, the recycling of old cellular parts, also regulate mucus formation in gut epithelial cells. The team will now study whether these proteins also regulate airway mucus as a means of controlling this process in asthma.
· An exploration of how epithelial cells in the skin might contribute to asthma. The researchers learned that damage to epithelial cells in the skin leads to a condition similar to atopic dermatitis and, in turn, an asthma-like condition. This “atopic march” also occurs in children, so this project aims to understand and interrupt this process as a means to prevent asthma.
“In combination, we’re investigating the broad role of the epithelial barrier in the development of inflammatory airway disease,” said Holtzman. “The center is unified around a goal of understanding how the epithelial barrier normally protects us but abnormally causes a remarkably common and serious type of disease. The approach is designed to use that information to preserve or restore the epithelial balance with the environment.”
U.S. News & World Report ranks Washington University School of Medicine No. 4 in the nation among medical researching, teaching and patient institutions.
RELATED STORY: Good News for St. Louis
Last spring, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America dropped St. Louis from the nation’s leading asthma-allergy capital to No. 6. Remnants of the city’s coal-burning days in the early 1900s had made such an impact on downtown St. Louis that Missouri Botanical Garden opened last year on property acquired some 40 miles outside the city to make sure delicate plants would thrive.
“When I was growing up near downtown, we could smell the acrid chemicals from the chemical plant that was all the way across the river in Illinois,” recalled Yahoo contributor Walt Crocker in 2011. “A friend’s father worked there and the fumes burned his throat so bad that he could no longer talk.”
Allergy and asthma specialists in the St. Louis area are gearing up for a busy season, beginning with patients suffering from allergies to tree pollen in the early to mid-spring, followed by grass pollen in the late spring and early summer, and weed pollen in the fall.
Additionally, with St. Louis sandwiched between two major rivers, the humidity in the summer is stifling, providing fertile opportunities for mold to grow.
Most impacted: children.
“As many as 40 percent of Americans suffer from allergies, and children average about eight colds per year,” says Leonard Bacharier, MD, board-certified pediatric allergy and immunology physician on staff at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “The key to effective treatment is proper identification.”
According to WebMD, 48 asthma and allergy specialists practice in the 17-county St. Louis area. In 2009, the ratio was 1 for 58, 937 residents, compared to the national ratio of 1 per 103,929 residents.
Washington University School of Medicine’s affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s Hospital include The Asthma Center, established in 1989 on the campus of Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital. Barnes-Jewish Hospital maintains one of the nation’s leading allergy and immunology services, with testing from allergic rhinitis, allergic conjunctivitis, sinusitis/nasal polyps, urticaria, and vocal cord dysfunction.