Grant: CIHR-ICRH Travel Awards - General pool

Asthma is a common respiratory disease. Many people first develop asthma as children. There is no test to diagnose childhood asthma and diagnosis is usually made based on symptoms. A simple, easy-to-use biomarker will be useful for diagnosis. One potential candidate is the “epigenetic clock”. However, the clocks that are currently available were built to study adult disease and may not be suitable when applied in children. In this project, I show that we can use new methods to improve these clocks so they more accurately represent biological processes in children and are more useful as biomarkers for early life asthma.