IL13 Signaling in Allergic Asthma

This study will investigate the role of dupilumab in the treatment of asthma with comorbid obesity. It is hypothesized that in airway epithelial cells, unique transcriptomic and proteomic expression patterns distinguish allergic and non-allergic patients with asthma and obesity and drive significant differential responses to dupilumab. It is further hypothesized that dupilumab will increase interleukin-13 receptor alpha 2 (IL-13Rα2) levels and/or signaling activity on airway epithelial cells isolated from allergic asthma patients with obesity. This is a pre-clinical research study of dupilumab-induced gene and protein expression analyses in nasal airway epithelial cells of adults with asthma and comorbid obesity. The study primarily seeks to: 1) assess the effect of dupilumab on transcriptomes, phosphoproteomes and secretomes of well-differentiated, primary airway epithelial cells as a function IL-13R subunit expression and IL-13Ra2 signaling, in allergic and non-allergic asthma patients with obesity; and 2) test whether dupilumab-induced gene and protein changes significantly correlate with parameters of airway inflammation in allergic and non-allergic asthma.