New asthma center to investigate clues to disease's motives
By Ross Tomlin
Canvassing patients' homes and laboratory settings, pulmonary experts at Baylor College of Medicine aim to get to the bottom of asthma's elusive origins, thanks to a $7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.
For the first time, BCM joins the ranks of the NIH's 11 Asthma and Allergic Disease Cooperative Research Centers currently receiving funding. The NIH program supports basic and clinical research on the mechanisms of asthma and allergic diseases as well as diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.
Hopes to resolve mystery
BCM's funding for the center will support three separate projects and three central cores under the five-year grant. Principal investigator N. Tony Eissa, M.D., associate professor of medicine at BCM, hopes the center will help resolve the mystery behind asthma's troubling escalation in recent years.
"Although it has become clear that asthma is an inflammatory disease, the underlying molecular mechanisms of such inflammation are still elusive," said Eissa. "Asthma has been on the rise for the past three decades, particularly in children, and the impact of asthma on the economy and public health is a major burden that continues to worsen."
Pinning down the cause
In addition to serving as the overall principal investigator and director for the center, Eissa will oversee a project investigating the exact role of nitric oxide, a molecule believed to contribute to the inflammation of asthma.
"That project will look at how novel therapies can empower a patient's own immune system with ways to reduce the effects of nitric oxide and provide new, potential therapeutic avenues to make new drugs," said Eissa.
A second project, led by David Corry, M.D., associate professor of medicine at BCM, and Dr. Stuart Abramson, associate professor of pediatrics at BCM, will collaborate with faculty members at The University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, headed by George Delclos, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of epidemiology and occupational medicine at UT, to collect and analyze dust and other allergenic materials at the homes of asthma patients. Using BCM laboratories, researchers will study specific proteases (enzymes that break down proteins into amino acids) that exist in some of the fungi found where asthma patients live. Parallel studies will be conducted in mice to help determine the effect of these molecules.
Farrah Kheradmand, M.D., associate professor of medicine at BCM, will head a third project that will study experimental models of asthma, in which mice will be introduced to different allergens to determine which proteases contribute to the inflammation of asthma. The activities of the center will be supported by three cores including an administrative core, an animal core, and a primary cells and imaging core. Nicolas Hanania, M.D., associate professor of medicine at BCM, will serve as lead investigator for the human studies.
Collaborations move research forward
The award brings to fruition several years of planning begun in 1999 by the late Joseph Rodarte, M.D., former chief of BCM's pulmonary section, who recruited a diversity of faculty members with interests in airway inflammation. Eissa says the advent of the new asthma center complements the college's other centers in fields ranging from neuroscience to cardiovascular disease.
"Investigators in this center will collaborate with other centers in the program to pin down the causes of inflammation in asthma," said Eissa. "This center brings hopes not only to asthma patients and their families but also to many clinicians and investigators in the field who have been anxious to move the pace of the research forward. It takes a village to do it, and that is how we plan to proceed."
