The ?Human Asthma Clinical Core B? will be a resource to provide well characterized human lung, lung lymph node, sputum, and peripheral blood specimens from asthma and control subjects to allow individual projects to investigate whether the immune, inflammatory, and remodeling pathway they are studying is more highly expressed in asthma compared to control subjects, is more highly expressed in severe asthma compared to mild asthma, is more highly expressed in asthmatics with severe remodeling compared to mild remodeling, is expressed at levels that differ in different lung anatomical compartments (i.e. proximal airway vs distal airway vs lung lymph nodes), and whether differences in expression levels are detectable in peripheral blood or sputum to potentially use as a biomarker of remodeling. The Core B resources will be used equally in each of the three projects comprising this UCSD AADCRC (Broide, Project 1; Croft, Project 2; Doherty, Project 3). Core B will also be a resource to provide well characterized human asthma and control lung cells (ILC2, CD4, smooth muscle, fibroblast, epithelium) for study in each Project. Finally, Core B will allow investigators in each project to utilize a novel ex vivo human lung bronchodilation, bronchoconstriction assay to determine whether the pathway they are studying influences bronchodilation, bronchoconstriction, or airway remodeling in human lungs from asthma compared to controls. Overall, the provision of these human lung, lung lymph node, sputum, and peripheral blood specimens from asthma and control subjects will allow the individual projects to determine whether the defined inflammatory and remodeling pathways they are investigating are different in asthmatics with differing levels of severity, differing levels of remodeling, or as compared to control subjects.
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