GRANT. The Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation continues to support asthma researcher Madeleine Rådinger, who has now received a half-time research position from the Foundation. She investigates immunopathological mechanisms in people with different types of asthma.
Asthma is characterized by chronic inflammation of the airways, which causes symptoms such as mucus production, coughing and difficulty breathing. There are several drugs that can ease asthma symptoms, but there continues to be groups of asthmatics that are difficult to treat.
Link between the immune system and asthma
Asthma is often caused by allergies, that is, the immune system over reacts to certain substances that are not actually dangerous, such as animal dander, pollen or dust mites. Allergic asthma is the most common type of asthma and traditionally allergic asthma is distinguished from so-called non-allergic asthma. A great deal of the current asthma research is performed on persons with allergies. Madeleine Rådinger, Docent at the Department of Internal Medicine, is interested in how the immune system reacts in persons with allergic asthma as opposed to persons with non-allergic asthma.
“We are trying to understand biological processes in the immune system that cause these different types of asthma, and we hope that these studies will increase our basic understanding and, in the long run, lead to better treatment methods especially for persons with difficult to treat types of asthma,” she says.
Lung disease care at Renströmska
Madeleine Rådinger broke into the research profession relatively late. For several years, she worked as an assistant nurse at Renströmska Sanatorium where she cared for patients with advanced lung cancer and severe asthma. That she later began to do research on asthma was pure coincidence – she came into contact with Jan Lötvall and received a fellowship in his group. After her dissertation, she was a postdoc for several years at the NIH, Laboratory of Allergic Diseases in Maryland, USA.
Today, she leads a smaller research group at Krefting Research Centre at the Sahlgrenska Academy. She studies microRNA, small molecules that regulate gene expression. A breakthrough for the research group was the finding that mice that lack a certain type of microRNA have very good protection against allergic asthma.
Collects samples from asthmatics
In addition, the research group examines samples from asthmatics and healthy people.
“We have just begun to collect samples from different groups of asthmatics. Healthy volunteers and asthmatics have provided us with sputum samples to analyze. We also take blood tests and collaborate with AstraZeneca, where we collect airway tissue samples from both asthmatics and healthy individuals,” explains Madeleine Rådinger.
The research goal is to be able to develop better drugs in the future for persons with difficult to treat asthma.
“Our hypothesis is that microRNA regulates the immune system in different ways, in different subgroups of asthma. We hope that our findings on microRNA will contribute to some kind of future test that can tell which type of asthma a person has and enable the best treatment to be given; and, it is also possible that this research will result in new treatment strategies, that will allow for new, more effective drugs to be developed,” says Madeleine Rådinger.
