Will we soon be able to fully treat asthma or respiratory allergies? In any case, this is the hope raised by a team of French researchers from CNRS and Inserm, working at the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology at Toulouse III University. In a study co-directed by two biologists, Corinne Cayrol (CNRS) and Jean-Philippe Girard (Inserm), the latter explain having identified “one of the molecules responsible for triggering inflammation at the origin of allergic respiratory diseases, such as as asthma and allergic rhinitis.
Concretely, these researchers identified the existence of an alarmin-type molecule, called TL1A, emitted by the lungs when they are exposed to an allergen (mushrooms in the air or even pollen). Alarmine, because it is this which then sends waves of alarm signals to the immune system, triggering a real “cascade of chain reactions responsible for allergic inflammation”, explains the study.
“An application that can be very fast”
The identification of this alarmin molecule could completely transform the way respiratory allergies are cured. “If we manage to block these alarm signals, then we can succeed in blocking the entire cascade that results from them. Whereas if we block the effects later, the treatment cannot be as effective,” confirms The Express biologist Jean-Philippe Girard, who co-led the study.
The CNRS and Inserm thus assure in their study that “in a few years, treatments based on antibodies blocking alarmin TL1A could benefit patients suffering from severe asthma or other allergic diseases”. An observation supported by Jean-Philippe Girard. “We are on an important discovery, with an application that can be very rapid. I certainly don’t want to make things dangle, that’s not my role. But we already know that this type of treatment already works and that it is not dangerous, because it is used in particular in the intestine, against Crohn’s disease. Within five years, we can legitimately think that patients with severe asthma could be treated in this way.”
Still expensive treatment
But the Inserm biologist nevertheless wants to remain cautious: this progress is still far from meaning that all people affected by respiratory allergies will be cured within the decade. “These treatments would currently be very expensive. They would be especially reserved for severe cases of asthma, which risk putting the patient’s life in danger, and which are resistant to existing treatments,” insists Jean-Philippe Girard.
17 million French people are affected by allergic diseases, including 4 million by asthma. This discovery would therefore, for the moment, be aimed primarily at those affected by severe asthma, i.e. 5% of asthmatics in France. “The most serious forms of asthma are responsible for several hundred deaths every year”, recall the CNRS and Inserm. Even if the mechanism would remain the same for less dangerous allergies. “On condition of finding a molecule which costs much less”, concludes Jean-Philippe Girard.