Microbiome-derived asthma and allergy protective substances for prevention

Asthma and allergies are the epidemic of the 21st century after a sharp rise in prevalence since the middle of the last century.

Asthma is the most common chronic condition for children at school age about every 10th pupil is affected in westernized countries. Likewise, allergic illnesses are very prevalent with 30- 50 % of the paediatric population being affected. Currently, there is neither cure nor effective prevention. However, asthma and allergies are illnesses, which are largely environmentally determined.

Exposures to the environmental microbiome greatly determine risk and protection from onset of illness in populations of common genetic make-up. My team and I have described relevant taxa of the environmental microbiome in the unique farm studies we pioneered. Very recently, we discovered the microbiome-derived functional agents conferring protection.

These epidemiological findings while being scientifically cutting edge, cannot be back translated to childrens and their families benefit.

My vision is thus to move the field of microbiome research forward towards in depth characterization of microbe-derived metabolite complexes to better understand their associated asthma- and allergy protective properties by advancing both the experimental and the human population-based studies. The interdisciplinary APROSUS Project addresses this research gap.

The aims are to characterize and synthetize these functional agents (aim 1), to understand the underlying mechanisms of protection (aim 2) and to validate the findings in the population-based farm studies (aim 3).

Thereby we will lay the ground for translation into innovative and effective prevention strategies to stop the asthma and allergy epidemic.