Identification of allergens from Aspergillus fumigatus-Potential association with lung damage in asthma.

Background: Component-resolved diagnosis allows detection of IgE sensitization having the advantage of reproducibility and standardization compared to crude extracts. The main disadvantage of the traditional allergen identification methods, 1- or 2-dimensional western blotting and screening of expression cDNA libraries with patients' IgEs, is that the native structure of the protein is not necessarily maintained.

Methods: We used a novel immunoprecipitation technique in combination with mass spectrometry to identify new allergens of Aspergillus fumigatus.

The airway fungal microbiome in asthma.

Background: Fungal involvement in asthma is associated with severe disease. The full spectrum of fungal species in asthma is not well described and is derived largely from insensitive culture techniques.

Objectives: To use high-throughput sequencing to describe the airway mycobiota in asthmatics with and without fungal sensitization and healthy controls; to compare samples representing different airway compartments; to determine whether the mycobiota was influenced by the fungal composition of outdoor air; and to compare findings with clinically relevant outcomes.

IRP2 as a potential modulator of cell proliferation, apoptosis and prognosis in nonsmall cell lung cancer.

is a gene that produces iron regulatory protein 2 (IRP2), which is critical to intracellular iron homeostasis and which relates to the rate of cellular proliferation. lies in a lung cancer susceptibility locus. The aims were to assess 1) the relationship between iron loading, cell proliferation and IRP2 expression in lung cancer; 2) the potential of iron related pathways as therapeutic targets; and 3) the relevance of IRP2 in operated lung cancer patients.

Allergic Fungal Airway Disease.

Fungi are ubiquitous and form their own kingdom. Up to 80 genera of fungi have been linked to type I allergic disease, and yet, commercial reagents to test for sensitization are available for relatively few species. In terms of asthma, it is important to distinguish between species unable to grow at body temperature and those that can (thermotolerant) and thereby have the potential to colonize the respiratory tract.