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BA Festival: Asthma and the Sinister Infiltrator

September 12, 2000

Professor Tim Williams, head of the Leukocyte Biology Section, Imperial College School of Medicine, will tell the BA Festival of Science on Tuesday 12 September how asthma may be caused primarily by a body defence system that has gone wrong - when allergens in the air are mistaken by the body for products from parasitic worms.

Professor Williams will say: “Enormous numbers of white cells from the blood accumulate in the lungs of people suffering from asthma, and particularly prominent are cells called ‘eosinophils.’”

“Eosinophils are thought to have evolved to attack parasitic worms. At sites of worm infection chemical signals are produced that call in eosinophils from the blood. The eosinophils then stick to the worm surface and release toxic granules that injure the parasite.”

Professor Williams suggests that inhaled allergens are mistaken by the body for products from worms. The allergens stimulate the production of chemical signals in the lung which in turn attract eosinophils.

“The eosinophils release their toxic granules and cause the inflammation and damage to lung tissue that contribute to the symptoms of asthma,” he says.

Professor Williams’s main research objective is to identify the chemical signals that are produced at sites of inflammation which attract particular types of white blood cells, and also how they act on the white cells to induce their migration into tissues.

His team was the first to discover the potent eosinophil chemoattractant protein called “Eotaxin” and show that it is produced in the asthmatic lung.

Several drug companies already have drugs in development that will specifically block the action of Eotaxin, and that of its receptor, the chemokine receptor 3. These compounds could prove to be very effective anti-allergy or anti-asthma drugs which will act by preventing eosinophil infiltration and hence lung tissue damage.

PRESS CONFERENCE: At 14:00 on Tuesday 12 September in the BA Festival of Science Press Centre, Imperial College.

The lecture will take place on Tuesday 12 September 2000 at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 1, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Imperial College.

For further information please contact:

Tom Miller
Press Office
Imperial College
Tel: 020 7594 6701 or 07803 886248
Email: t.miller@ic.ac.uk

Imperial College, University of London