In January of 2000, new pilot project grants were awarded to four talented young scientists who are committed to careers in pulmonary diseases with a focus on asthma. One of these projects concerns the in- creased risk of developing asthma among infants whose mothers have asthma. The investigator hypothesizes that the antibodies in a pregnant woman that are responsible for her asthma may cross the placenta and play a role in the development of childhood asthma in the baby. A second project, headed by a cardiovascular and endocrine physi-ologist who was attracted by the rich asthma research climate at the University of New Mexico, is concerned with airway smooth muscle. This investigator has developed a new approach to determining the factors that contribute to the propensity of the smooth muscle that sur-rounds the airways to constrict during asthma episodes.
Dendritic cells are essential components of the immune response that occurs in asthma.
It is already known that IgE plays a role in causing mast cells to release their contents in asthmatic airways and contribute to the inflammatory process, but this project proposes new ways in which IgE antibodies participate in the development of asthma episodes. This scientist is investigating a protein from the Clara cells that line the airways, which may help us under-stand why children infected with RSV tend to develop asthma. Known as Clara cell secretory protein or CCSP, it dampens inflamma-tory responses in the lungs by decreasing inappropriate and excessive inflammation in lung tissue. If a child who is geneti-cally predisposed to asthma is infected with RSV, and is unable to make enough CCSP, the result would be prolonged inflammation, and that could set the stage for developing asthma. Eventually, the information developed in studies like this could lead to new treatments for asthma.