Evaluation of innate lymphoid cells in non-allergic asthma.

Asthma is a common chronic respiratory disease affecting 5-15% of the population for all ages. Different asthma phenotypes exist. Allergic asthma is well-characterized and several murine allergic asthma models exist. However, about 50% of the adult asthma patients have non-allergic asthma, which is difficult to treat and can be triggered by environmental factors such as air pollution, infections and exercise. Murine models of non-allergic asthma are largely lacking. Recent studies have shown that not only the adaptive immune system plays a role in the pathogenesis of asthma, but also the innate immune system with innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) might be important. The goal of this project is 1) to develop murine models of non-allergic asthma; 2) to study the role of the newly-described ILC in these models; 3) to study the role of different environmental factors on airway epithelial cells and cytokine production in vitro; 4) to characterize ILCs in different human non-allergic asthma phenotypes.