Telethon Institute for Child Health Research scientist Dr Anthony Bosco has been recognised for his cutting edge research investigating asthma attacks in children.
Dr Bosco, in collaboration with Professor Fernando Martinez from the University of Arizona, have discovered a network of inflammatory genes that cause asthma attacks in children. The results could pave the way for the development of new drugs to combat this chronic lung disease which affects more than 2 million Australians.
The research has seen Dr Bosco honoured with an 'Early Career Award' from the University of Western Australia for the most outstanding published work accepted in 2010-11.
The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, took a different approach to investigating the cause of asthma. In contrast to previous studies which have looked for one gene at a time, this study considered how multiple genes working in combination can bring about asthma attacks.
"We took a big picture approach to determine how hundreds of genes work together in networks to cause asthma. Our unique approach demonstrated for the first time that a gene called IRF7 plays a major role in switching on a large gene network that triggers asthma attacks."
Dr Bosco says more research is now needed into the role of IRF7 in asthma with the hope that further studies could eventually lead to the development of new treatments to combat this debilitating disease.
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Bosco A, Ehteshami S, Panyala S, Martinez FD. Interferon regulatory factor 7 is a major hub connecting interferon-mediated responses in virus-induced asthma exacerbations in vivo. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2012 Jan;129(1):88-94.
First published Tuesday 6 March 2012.