Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease of major concern to our community, affecting one in four New Zealand children and one in six adults. It is characterised by recurrent attacks of breathlessness and wheezing, and varies in severity and frequency from person to person. During an asthma attack the lining of the bronchial tubes swells, causing the airways to narrow. This makes it hard to breathe in and even harder to breathe out.
It is now clear that the final symptoms of asthma are paradoxically due to our body's own immune system overreacting to quite harmless environmental triggers such as pollen or house dust mites. In fact it is only one part of the immune system that seems to be activated, the so-called Th2 immune response, which normally functions to protect us against parasitic worm infections.
Our research group is committed to unravelling the basic biology of the Th2 immune response that gives rise to asthma, so that we can apply this knowledge to the development of generally applicable vaccines and therapies for the treatment of individuals with established disease.
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