MTT in Severe Asthma

Investigators:
Principal investigator:  W.J. Calhoun, MD, APICS
Co-investigators:  M. Jamaluddin, PhD, J. Wiktorowitz, PhD, B. Luxon, PhD, A. Kurosky, PhD, A R Brasier, MD, B. Ameredes, PhD.
UTMB Departments:  Medicine, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
K12 Trainee:  Curig Prys-Picard, MD, PhD, Division of APICS

Summary:  Although patients with severe asthma constitute only 5-10% of all patients with the disease, this small subgroup accounts for a disproportionate share of morbidity and medical costs.  Severe asthma is a syndrome that is characterized by a relative lack of responsiveness to gluocorticoids.  It is clear that this group is heterogenous in nature, yet objective methods for identification of those at risk are not available.  In this MTT, UTMB investigators will seek to identify biomarker patterns that are associated with asthma severity or its complications.

Objectives/Milestones:
1.  Recruit normal volunteers to establish a reference dataset of normal BAL proteins;
2.  Create integrated clinical and proteomic database for severe asthma data management;
3.  Develop web based data capture forms for conducting clinical studies at UTMB and its clinics;
3.  Develop and validate a novel biomarker discovery platform for identification of proteomic signatures in bronchoalveolar lavage;
4.  Validate models for pattern recognition using cytokine patterns in an independent subject group;
5.  Compete for K-level NIH funding, and an NIH multi-investigator RO1 project.

CTSA Resource usage: 
Bioinformatics, Translational Technologies, Biostatistics