Extracellular Traps: A Novel Therapeutic Target for Severe Asthma

Abstract

Asthma is a complicated disease defined by a combination of clinical symptoms and physiological characteristics. Typically, asthma is diagnosed by the presence of episodic cough, wheezing, or dyspnea triggered by variable environmental factors (allergens and respiratory infections), and reversible airflow obstruction. To date, the majority of asthmatic patients have been adequately controlled by anti-inflammatory/bronchodilating agents, but those with severe asthma (SA) have not been sufficiently controlled by high-dose inhaled corticosteroids-long-acting beta-agonists plus additional controllers including leukotriene modifiers. Accordingly, these uncontrolled patients provoke a special issue, because they consume high healthcare resources, requiring innovative precision medicine solutions. Recently, phenotyping based on biomarkers of airway inflammation has led to elucidating the pathophysiological mechanism of SA, where emerging evidence has highlighted the significance of eosinophil or neutrophil extracellular traps contributing to the development of SA. Here, we aimed to provide current findings about extracellular traps as a novel therapeutic target for asthma to address medical unmet needs.

Keywords:

• asthma
• eosinophil
• extracellular trap
• neutrophil
• therapeutics
• unmet needs

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank for Seoul Medical Paper Consulting for English language editing.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest for this work and that there are no financial or other issues that might lead to conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) grant funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (Grant no. HR16C0001).