Imagine a future in which treatment goals we once thought unattainable could be reached. GSK, along with global specialists and patient organisations, is aiming to achieve just that by applying years of expertise in respiratory disease, and a deep understanding of the immune system, to develop solutions that can help some people with severe asthma achieve clinical remission.
Asthma affects more than 300 million people worldwide and varies in terms of severity. At least 10% of people with asthma have severe asthma, and of those, 80% have elevated levels of a type of white blood cell called eosinophils, which cause lung inflammation and severe eosinophilic asthma.
People with severe asthma can face many years before they receive a specific diagnosis of their type of asthma, wasting time, sometimes year, of frustrating trial and error approaches to treatment options. Alongside the ongoing damage caused to a patient’s lungs due to avoidable exacerbations, this can also take a toll on their mental health, work and social life.
Achieving clinical remission could significantly improve the quality of life of severe asthma patients, minimising the risk of attacks – known as exacerbations – and allowing them to enjoy activities they never thought possible.
Only recently has the concept of clinical remission as a treatment goal been applied to asthma. Today scientists and physicians have a far greater understanding of the different biological causes of asthma and it is now known that not all asthma is the same, the causes and symptoms varying from person to person.
Advances in science and medicine means that remission is already considered to be an accepted treatment goal in many other immune-mediated conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, and eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA).
These conditions have a common link: a dysfunction in the immune system that gives rise to overactivity and excessive inflammation, causing it to attack the body as if it were a threat.
Identifying drugs that address the precise dysfunction in the immune system in immune-mediated diseases, without dampening the entire system, and with minimal side effects, is a challenge scientists continue to explore solutions to.
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