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news.Scientists from the Cardiff University have discovered the potential root cause and a novel treatment for asthma, a chronic lung disease affecting 300 million people worldwide.
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Working in collaboration with scientists at King’s College London and the Mayo Clinic, the scientists described the previously unproven role of the calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) in causing asthma.
The team used mouse models of asthma and human airway tissue from asthmatic and non-asthmatic people to reach their findings, which were published in Science Translational Medicine journal.
The paper highlights the effectiveness of a class of drugs known as calcilytics in manipulating CaSR to reverse all symptoms associated with asthma, including airway narrowing, airway twitchiness and inflammation, which contribute to increased breathing difficulty.
Cardiff University School of Biosciences principal investigator professor Daniela Riccardi said: "For the first time we have found a link airways inflammation, which can be caused by environmental triggers – such as allergens, cigarette smoke and car fumes – and airways twitchiness in allergic asthma.
"Our paper shows how these triggers release chemicals that activate CaSR in airway tissue and drive asthma symptoms like airway twitchiness, inflammation, and narrowing.
"Using calcilytics, nebulized directly into the lungs, we show that it is possible to deactivate CaSR and prevent all of these symptoms.
"If we can prove that calcilytics are safe when administered directly to the lung in people, then in five years we could be in a position to treat patients and potentially stop asthma from happening in the first place."
Cardiff Professor Paul Kemp said the identification of CaSR in airway tissue will lead to development of treatment of other inflammatory lung diseases beyond asthma such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic bronchitis, which are predicted to be the third biggest killers worldwide by 2022.
Riccardi and her team are currently seeking funding to determine the efficacy of calcilytic drugs in treating asthmas that are especially difficult to treat, particularly steroid-resistant and influenza-exacerbated asthma, and to evaluate the drugs in patients with asthma.