[Asthma Update 2015--What Cell Biology in Basic Pulmonary Research Can Offer to the Pneumologist].

Bronchial asthma is one of the most common chronic inflammatory diseases world-wide causing an enormous socio-economic burden especially in industrialized countries. Currently, asthma is increasingly considered to be a poly-symptomatic disease comprising a variety of different asthma phenotypes and endotypes. This heterogeneity of asthma explains why the standard treatment with corticosteroids and β-agonists cannot achieve full symptom control in all cases, especially not during acute exacerbations. Therefore, current asthma research focuses on primary prevention of asthma as well as on novel approaches towards a phenotype- and endotype-specific asthma therapy.