EDITORIAL ASTHMA | Mast cells in asthma: biomarker and therapeutic target Laurent L. Reber1,2 and John V. Fahy3,4,5,6,7 Affiliations: 1Département d’Immunologie, Unité des Anticorps en Thérapie et Pathologie, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. 2Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), U1222, Paris, France. 3The Airway Clinical Research Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. 4Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. 5Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. 6Sandler Center for Basic Asthma Research, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. 7Dept of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. Correspondence: Laurent L. Reber, Département d’Immunologie, Unité des Anticorps en Thérapie et Pathologie, INSERM U1222, Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Docteur Roux, 75015 Paris, France. E-mail:
[email protected] @ERSpublications Mast cell numbers or activity levels could help identify asthma subtypes and be relevant for treatment effectiveness http://ow.ly/Xmanp The heterogeneity of asthma phenotypes represents a challenge for adequate assessment and treatment of the disease [1]. The molecular analysis of highly characterised cohorts of asthma patients should help to identify biomarkers of asthma subtypes, which might lead to more efficient and personalised therapies for asthma [1, 2]. So far, asthma has been mainly divided into two subtypes: T-helper cell type 2 (Th2)-high asthma, which comprises patients with airway and systemic eosinophilia who are responsive to glucocorticoids; and Th2-low asthma, which comprises patients without airway or systemic eosinophilia who are not responsive to glucocorticoids [3].