Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Asthma, affecting approximately 10% of the population, is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways, often leading to irreversible loss of lung function. Asthma is caused by the expansion of subsets of T cells-Th2 and Th17 cells; while Treg cells, reduced in asthma, are able to inhibit allergic responses. Myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are a newly discovered population of cells which have a remarkable ability to suppress T cell responses and to induce the expansion of Treg cells. Due to these abilities, MDSCs may ameliorate asthma where T cells are dysfunctional. In this abstract, our results showed that injection of in vitro-generated MDSCs ameliorated allergic airway inflammation, which indicated that it might be useful for the treatment of asthma.