
Could there be an underlying connection between eczema and asthma that would allow for the combined treatment of both? Researchers from the University of California San Francisco are studying a shared connection that may yield promising results in the future. UCSF researchers, Mark Ansel, PhD, a professor of microbiology and immunology, and Marlys Fassett, MD, PhD, an associate professor of dermatology and clinician who treats itchy, allergic reactions like eczema, are combining their biomedical expertise to learn more.
In 2012, Dr. Fassett arrived at UCSF to pursue her dermatology residency, armed with a joint MD-PhD degree from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the worst symptoms of eczema her patients experience is incessant itch, spurring them to scratch their sore skin and make things worse.
Fassett studies the immune protein “itch cytokine” and its abundance in the skin of her patients with eczema. Her goal has been to learn more about the effect of the protein and how to control it. The itch cytokine and asthma-related molecules are made by the same type of immune cell, the T-cell.
Drs. Ansel and Fassett’s research began to uncover common mechanisms in many allergic and immunologic disorders, including eczema and asthma.
“With asthma, there’s an underlying, allergy-like immunity, driven by T-cells,” Dr. Ansel said in the release. “One new drug, dupilumab, which targets several immune molecules in the lungs, has transformed care for many allergic-asthma patients and even some with COPD. Those same molecules are also in skin, and Marlys and her dermatology colleagues prescribe them to help people with eczema.”
Drs. Fassett and Ansel are working collaboratively and independently to consider other drugs that target the immune system, including nemolizumab—now in clinical trials for eczema—which might also treat asthma and other diseases.
“Immunology has had a big impact on cancer and many other diseases, even psychiatric diseases, in the last decade or two, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Dr. Ansel said in the release. “The real impactful insights keep coming from the community working together. There has to be interchange between clinicians and basic scientists to move the needle.”