Gene expression profiling in asthma
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A randomised, open-labelled bronchoscopy study to assess the effects of inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) on adult healthy volunteers
IRAS ID
168769
Contact name
Peter Bradding
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
Eudract number
2015-001937-25
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 26 days
Research summary
Asthma is a very common disorder which causes a great deal of distress for sufferers, and occasionally results in premature death. Approximately 10% of people with asthma have severe disease which is not helped by current treatments; we need to find new treatments for these patients urgently. Patients with asthma are not all the same, but have distinct features which characterise their asthma. We therefore hypothesise that asthma is not a single disease, but a syndrome resulting from several distinct underlying disease processes known as endotypes. There are approximately 30,000 genes in humans, and each gene is responsible for the production of a particular protein. Using a technique called “whole genome expression profiling” we have undertaken a study looking at the activity of all 30,000 genes in the airway tissue of people with asthma. This work has identified 3 mutually exclusive distinct molecular patterns (endotypes) of severe asthma and has identified other potentially important molecular targets (manuscripts in preparation).
Steroid therapy also alters gene expression in the airways. Because patients with severe asthma take high doses of inhaled and sometimes oral steroids, it is important that we have a clear picture of the changes that steroids induce in the airways if we are going to understand fully the meaning of our observations in asthma. We would therefore like to treat healthy volunteers with a high (but currently licensed dose) of an inhaled corticosteroid for 4 weeks, collecting airway biopsies via a telescope (bronchoscope) before and after treatment. These pieces of airway tissue will analysed using whole genome expression profiling in the same way as the tissue collected from patients with asthma. We will then be able to subtract the effects of steroids from our asthma data, providing a clearer picture of the factors that drive severe asthma.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EM/0313
Date of REC Opinion
23 Oct 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion