Many asthma patients have access to a better life thanks to a series of treatments that allow them to keep their disease under control, but their dream to get rid of asthma is not yet there. Despite the great advances in the understanding and phenotyping of different types of asthma, today there is no record of treatments able to cure asthma. By looking at the results of a previous EU-funded project (PREDICTA), researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Athens have detected viral microbial imbalance in children with asthma; at the same time, bacterial viruses (phages) seem to be reduced in asthmatic patients. A possible link may reveal the ability of phages to control bacterial populations and thus bacterial imbalances and inflammation. The CURE project (funded by Horizon 2020) proposes a phage therapy that could control the immune dysregulation of the disease and may eventually be able to cure it.
The project started in 2017 and some interesting results are already arising. These were presented and discussed in the first partner meeting which took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, last 24th September. In particular, researchers have advance estimating the physiological fluctuation of the microbiome. They have conducted an evaluation of asthmatic patients (40) and healthy subjects (20) in Greece and in Poland to understand how our daily routine impacts the configuration of the microbiome, how for example our active, moving and resting time applies oscillations to our colony of bacteria. The results of this study will serve to set up a second evaluation that will last 12 months to characterize microbiome dysbiosis, its perturbations in time, and their relation to disease activity and immunological patterns.
At the same time the project partners are assessing if the phages prepared by the Eliava Institute in Georgia (Staphylococcal bacteriophage and Pyo Bacteriophage) are suitable to be cultivates in laboratory cells. At the SIAF centre in Davos, Switzerland, CURE researchers are testing the effects of phages on ephitelial barriers; while the Biomedical Research Foundation Academy Of Athens, Greece, is examining the effect of direct exposure of mononuclear cells to phages.
Other news and updates on the projects will come with the first CURE newsletter that will be published in November 2018. To keep up-to-date visit www.cureasthma.eu and subscribe to the newsletter