Dr. Robert Schleimer Receives Merit Award

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Dr Schleimer and his colleagues have been working to understand how anti-inflammatory steroids work to control inflammatory disease such as asthma, hay fever, sinus disease and others. Their work has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which these important drugs block inflammation and improve the ability of the airways to defend themselves.

The project is entitled, "Glucocorticosteriod Action In Inflammatory Disease." The description states, "We are proposing studies to determine how prednisone works to improve chronic diseases such as chronic rhinosinusitis, a disease of the upper airways and sinuses that often is characterized by the formation of nasal polyps and blockade of the sinus openings and the upper airway passages. This disease affects over 30 million people in the US alone and is a cause of considerable morbidity, leading to over 200,000 surgical interventions each year. We have new hypotheses about how prednisone and other steroids improve this disease, including blockade of local accumulation of inflammatory B lymphocytes, improvement of the barrier function of the upper airways and exerting anti-inflammatory effects while preserving or enhancing innate immunity that prevents infections from occurring. Studies in this grant will test whether these hypotheses are correct and give us valuable new insight into the pathogenesis of chronic rhinosinusitis as well as the mechanism by which steroids improve it."