Welcome

The mission of the MRC and Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma is threefold:

1. To advance understanding of asthma and allergy to inform the development of new, effective and targeted treatments and prevention.
2. To develop the Centre into a high quality integrated environment for basic and clinical research training.
3. To provide authoritative public information on asthma and allergy in conjunction with stakeholders and partners.

The Centre was formed in October 2005 as a partnership between MRC, Asthma UK, Imperial and KCL. The Centre’s capability in translational research has been further enhanced by forming a partnership with Queen Mary’s University. This link provides a wealth of experience in researching asthma in the primary care community and access to a network of General Practices and their patients in the East End of London. This is critical as most asthmatic patients in the UK are now looked after by their GPs.

The Centre has provided a very stimulating training environment for its postgraduate community and junior postdoctoral scientists. There is a great demand for the Centre’s training posts and the quality of the postgraduate students has risen very strikingly; 92% of our students achieved a distinction or merit in the MSc immunology degree part of their newly established 4-year PhD course.

Key research themes

The Centre’s research themes are:

• IgE structure and function
• Genetics and epigenetics
• Inflammation and airway structure
• Role of the environment (Infection/Vit D/Pollution/diet)
• Immunomodulation (including work on early life interventions)

The Centre offers a group of highly motivated and internationally competitive scientists opportunities for interactions and complementation of skills, while still preserving scientific independence. Considerable added value comes from the multidisciplinary nature of the team that is addressing a complex problem from gene to the community and from womb to adulthood. The clinical/basic-science interface has been one of the keys to its success, providing improved opportunities for new ideas to arise and for discoveries to be fully exploited for the benefit of health care.

Pollution research

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8512247092560214437