Written by Vanessa Santilli for the Ontario Lung Association on Nov. 9

Predicting whether potential new asthma drugs will be effective is all in a day’s work for Dr. Paul O’Byrne, principal investigator for the AllerGen Clinical Investigator Collaborative (CIC).

He leads a nationwide network of researchers who use a specific clinical model of “allergen-induced, airway responses” to try to understand the way asthma develops, including the role of environmental allergens. That model has also proved highly effective in evaluating the effectiveness of new asthma medications.

“It’s particularly useful to large pharmaceutical companies as well as small biotech companies who are trying to decide whether to invest the huge sums involved in getting a new drug to market,” says Dr. O’Byrne, who is also executive director of the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton.

With six sites across Canada and one in Stockholm, the project is part of the federally-funded Allergen NCE, the Allergy, Genes and Environment Network, established in 2004 in response to the fact that one in three Canadians lives with allergic disease.

Dr. O’Byrne says that although Canada is still a leader in asthma research, new funding priorities are creating challenges for the research community. “Ten to 15 years ago, companies were interested in understanding the basic mechanisms of disease and would invest in studies to find out what was going on in the airways of people with asthma,” he explains. “Their funding is much more directed these days.”

Still, he’s very optimistic about the future of asthma research and treatment in this country. He recalls, as a young physician, seeing asthma patients on ventilators in the intensive care unit. “That hardly ever happens now. And knowing that we’ve made a difference as a group of scientists and physicians is very rewarding.”