What is it about?

Two independent but interrelated pathological processes occur in asthma. These are inflammation and remodeling of the airways. Current medications can target inflammation but are largely ineffective against remodeling. Here we describe how autophagy can be targeted in asthma to affect chronic structural changes in the airways.

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Why is it important?

What we have found is that when one of the body’s fundamental mechanisms, known as autophagy i.e. self eating is activated in asthmatic lungs, changes take place that progress the severity of the disease. The changes are believed to “remodel” the lungs with excessive muscle mass and greater amounts of extracellular proteins such as collagen contributing to persistent breathlessness, acute asthma attacks and loss of lung function. In here we have exploited this fundamental mechanism for therapeutic gain in asthma.

Perspectives

Asthma affects more than 330 million people globally. There has been a very limited advancement in discovering new drugs for asthma, seemingly this is only restricted to new "biologicals" that can only be used in a sub-set of asthma patients with a huge price tag. Therefore hunt for new affordable medicines that are equally efficacious in difficult to-treat asthma patients is warranted. Our current study extends the knowledge of how one of the fundamental cellular mechanisms can be exploited for its clinical use in asthma, thus opening doors for a possible new drug target that can alter and even halt chronic changes affecting disease progression that ultimately leads to airflow limitation and breathlessness in asthma patients.

Dr Pawan Sharma
University of Technology Sydney

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Autophagy Activation in Asthma Airways Remodeling, American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, May 2019, American Thoracic Society,
DOI: 10.1165/rcmb.2018-0169oc.
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