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© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Asthma is now recognized as a heterogeneous disease, encompassing different phenotypes driven by distinct pathophysiological mechanisms called endotypes. Common phenotypes of asthma, referred to as eosinophilic asthma, are characterized by the presence of eosinophilia. Eosinophils are usually considered invariant, terminally differentiated effector cells and have become a primary therapeutic target in severe eosinophilic asthma (SEA) and other eosinophil-associated diseases (EADs). Biological treatments that target eosinophils reveal an unexpectedly complex role of eosinophils in asthma, including in SEA, suggesting that “not all eosinophils are equal”. In this review, we address our current understanding of the role of eosinophils in asthma with regard to asthma phenotypes and endotypes. We further address the possibility that different SEA phenotypes may involve differences in eosinophil biology. We discuss how these differences could arise through eosinophil “endotyping”, viz. adaptations of eosinophil function imprinted during their development, or through tissue-induced plasticity, viz. local adaptations of eosinophil function through interaction with their lung tissue niches. In doing so, we also discuss opportunities, technical challenges, and open questions that, if addressed, might provide considerable benefits in guiding the choice of the most efficient precision therapies of SEA and, by extension, other EADs.

Details

Title
Eosinophils as Drivers of Severe Eosinophilic Asthma: Endotypes or Plasticity?
Author
Glenn Van Hulst 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Bureau, Fabrice 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Desmet, Christophe J 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology, B34, GIGA Institute and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Liège University, 4000 Liège, Belgium; [email protected] (G.V.H.); [email protected] (F.B.) 
 Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology, B34, GIGA Institute and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Liège University, 4000 Liège, Belgium; [email protected] (G.V.H.); [email protected] (F.B.); Walloon Excellence in Life Sciences and Biotechnology (Welbio), 1300 Wavres, Belgium 
First page
10150
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
MDPI AG
ISSN
16616596
e-ISSN
14220067
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2576419123
Copyright
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.