MRC Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma

Allergy affects 1 in 6 people in the UK and Asthma affects 1 in 12 of the population in the UK, with 5.2 million people currently receiving treatment. The UK has one of the highest prevalences of asthma in young adults in Europe and the numbers of children reporting asthma symptoms has risen six fold over the last 30 years. Asthma costs the NHS an average of #889m per year and it is estimated that at least 12.7 million working days are lost due to asthma each year. This health and economic burden on the nation emphasizes the importance of research that tries to understand the diseases. The current proposal for a Centre brings together a group of doctors and scientists to discover new teatments and a cure for allergy and asthma.

The prevalence of allergic disease in the UK is amongst the highest in the world and that of asthma in young adults is the highest in Europe. The mission of the proposed MRC Centre is to understand allergic mechanisms of asthma to inform the development of new treatments. A further key objective is to create a high quality environment for research training and to be an authoritative voice for the MRC in allergy and asthma in the public domain. The Centre will facilitate development of a critical mass of researchers working co-ordinately in an internationally competitive unit for the benefits of health care. It will establish core facilities, thereby focussing resources, and enable new programmes of work to be started with even greater potential for more competitive funding, which would not otherwise be possible. The Centre is a partnership between the MRC, Imperial, KCL and Asthma UK. The two-site strategy at Imperial and KCL is innovative as it can draw on strengths in other disciplines within the two institutions to bear on the scientific programme of the Centre; partner Trusts ensure greater access to a wider range of clinical materials for the benefit of the Centre than would be possible otherwise; and support from two independent streams (currently c. #3.5 million for 2003-4 with further new funding if Centre is approved) of NHS R+D resources will be available for asthma and allergy research. Furthermore, Asthma UK has agreed to contribute approximately #2 million towards the Centre?s infrastructure. The research network created by the Centre will facilitate translational science. A number of strategies are rapidly approaching a stage to be tested in the clinic, such as IgE-receptor inhibitors, cytokine and chemokine receptor inhibitors and novel approaches to allergen specific immunotherapy for allergic rhinitis and asthma.