Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Asthma is an inflammatory airway disease of which the prevalence and morbidity has risen steadily in the past 15 years. In Canada alone, asthma afflicts 12% of children and 6% of adults and has a total annual economic burden exceeding $750 million. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to develop new treatments and identify new treatment targets that may inhibit, perhaps even reverse, disease progression. Statins, which inhibit an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase and lower plasma cholesterol, are widely used to treat cardiovascular disease and are well tolerated. Our studies will assess the effects of statins on airway remodelling and in particular on airway wall fibrosis; a process which contributes directly to airway wall thickening and as such to airflow limitation in asthma. To this aim we will use human airway fibroblasts and airway smooth muscle cells, which are well known to contribute to fibrosis, obtained from both asthmatics and non-asthmatics. Moreover, we will investigate whether statins can prevent and/or reverse airway inflammation and remodelling in an in vivo mouse model of chronic asthma. The insight that our studies will provide has excellent potential to identify whether statins can be used as an effective pharmacological intervention in the treatment of allergic asthma.