Allergy and Clinical Immunology Research Group

1. Allergy

Clinical research, cohort based, on drug hypersensitivity

Food allergy: clinical driven research into hidden allergens, co-factor enhanced food allergy, rare allergens (allergy to carmine, eatable insect allergens, WDEIA quality of life study etc…)

Mastocytosis and hymenoptera venom allergy and treatment: clinical prospective follow-up over 30 years of a large database of patients with hymentoptera venom allergy – coincidence of mastocytosis – role of c-kit determination in peripheral blood in adults

Children: (cutaneous vs systemic) mastocytosis: role of c-kit determination in peripheral blood; longitudinal study

Role of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) in chronic intestinal inflammation and intestinal fibrosis (ongoing): intended to broaden ILC research to allergic diseases (food allergy, eosinophilic oesophagitis)

2. Tolerance induction

Tolerance induction towards allergens: development of both natural (longitudinal studies) and immunotherapy-induced tolerance: study of the role of regulatory T cells and adaptive immunity in environmental and food allergy

3. Upper and lower airway hyper-reactivity

Study of the impact on epithelial barrier dysfunction on chronic airway inflammation, including interaction with environment, microbiome and therapeutic targets)

Study of neuro-immune mechanisms underlying chronic airway inflammation

Lower airway inflammation (in close collaboration with lab of pneumology):

- in house murine models of allergic asthma

- development of new mouse models for non-allergic asthma

- role of innate immunity (and ILCs) vs adaptive immunity in those models

Translational research in patients with upper and/or lower airway inflammation: immune cells and cytokines recruited/expressed in upper and lower airway tissue: cross-sectional studies and studies after experimental provocation (allergen, exercise, cold air,...)