Eosinophils in Asthma Models to House Dust Mite for Drug Development.

Murine models of asthma are developed to better understand the mechanisms of asthma including eosinophil recruitment in the airways with the aim of evaluating new therapeutic strategies. They are intended to model the typical features of human disease, in particular airway inflammation, hyperresponsiveness (AHR), and remodeling. The phenotype of inflammatory cells recovered from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) is studied with innovative flow cytometry techniques while airway obstruction is measured using the forced oscillation technique, and airway responsiveness approached by barometric plethysmography in awake and unconstrained animals. We here describe models of asthma of house dust mite (HDM) as a clinically relevant allergen: a short study design (8 days) model of hypereosinophilic asthma and a chronic (31 days) asthma model, both suitable to evaluate the potential of new drug candidates to prevent allergic asthma.