The aim of the respiratory theme is to use personalised medicine to improve the lives of adults and children with lung disease. Our major focus is asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but also other chronic lung diseases and infections such as interstitial lung disease and TB. We aim to achieve this by furthering our understanding of the different ways these diseases present themselves and the molecular mechanisms underpinning these differences. We will use the knowledge uncovered to develop new, personalised interventions for patients. To address this aim we have established three highly integrated research areas:
- Discovery
- Biomarkers and Phenotypes
- Clinical Interventions
We aim to:
- Determine the mechanisms that make patients susceptible to, and develop increasing severity of, asthma, COPD and other lung diseases by extending and translating our discoveries of the genetic basis of lung function and lung disease traits
- Identify and validate therapeutic targets for asthma, COPD and other lung diseases
- Integrate multi-scale ‘omics’ and clinical meta-data to identify and validate novel phenotypes/endotypes of lung disease, to inform the development of clinically useful biomarkers
- Determine the role of environmental exposure (pollution, allergens and pathogens) on airway diseases’ likelihood and progression
- Apply existing and new biomarker-driven, personalised interventions for lung diseases
- Interrogate response or lack thereof, to clinical interventions (drugs or lifestyle changes) to optimise current biomarkers, refine our understanding of mechanisms and the development of new biomarkers and targets in asthma, COPD and other lung diseases
For more information on our current research, view our case studies.