Despite decades of research, the inflammatory conditions of the respiratory tract are not yet fully understood. This is due to the very complex heterogeneity of inflammation in the airways, where each umbrella diagnosis contains individual patients with different immunological profiles.
Using high-end multiplex histological staining methods, and software for advanced quantitative digital image analysis, on tissues from a broad palette of respiratory diseases, spatial ”histomic” data such as complex spatial relationships, cell cluster formations, and multi-dimensional cell patterns are characterized and correlated to clinical evaluations.
The overall aim is to provide:
- critical new understanding of the complex immunopathology and structural pathologies underlying respiratory inflammatory diseases (foremost in asthma, COPD and IPF but also in other inflammatory states of the airways)
- to reveal new disease mechanisms that, apart from leading to increased disease understanding, also may represent potential new targets for drug treatment
- to identify potential clinically useful immunologic markers or phenotypes that, apart from leading to increased disease understanding, also may improve patient sub-classification and personalized medicine
- to evaluate translatability of results obtained from blood cells, in vitro cell models, ex vivo explant experiments, or pre-clinical models (e.g., transgenic mice models, allergen-induced models) by correlating to the immunological signatures present in the human anatomical microenvironments
