Video feature: Allergen Delivery Inhibitors - a potential end to asthma?

1 July 2011

In the UK, asthma kills approximately three people every day. The cause of their premature death is asphyxiation, a severe lack of oxygen to the blood and, ultimately, brain. This is a statistic Clive Robinson (University of London) and David Garrod (University of Manchester) are determined to change.

At the heart of asthma lies an excessive reaction to a 'trigger'; something in the person's environment elicits a strong response in their airways. This trigger causes the smooth muscle surrounding the myriad of delicate airways branching throughout the lungs to constrict. The result is a series of symptoms asthma sufferers are all too familiar with: wheezing, shortness of breath and a tightening of the chest.

One of the principle causes of asthma is the house dust mite. Less than half a millimetre in size, these minute creatures share occupancy with humans in our soft furnishings (such as our beds, carpets and furniture), eating tiny particles of organic matter - such as our skin.

Although it's been known for some time that the mites' waste contains an allergen-causing protein, it’s only now that the team has discovered a way to block this protein's action. By doing so, they hope to create an entirely new class of anti-asthma drug, targeting the root cause of asthma itself, rather than its symptoms. In this short film, they explain how.

Running time: 4 min 4 s

Read the transcript [PDF 79KB]

Watch this video on YouTube

Image: A colour-enhanced SEM of common household dust and possible allergens. Credit: Wellcome Images.