摘要
According to the World Health Organization,the prevalence of asthma is rising worldwide,and asthma causes 250,000 deaths annually.1 Allergic asthma is a type of chronic airway inflammation caused by dysregulated T helper type 2(Th2)-type immune responses.Patients with allergic asthma are characterized by elevated serum immunoglobulin E(IgE)antibody levels,mucus production,and pulmonary inflammation as well as airway hyperresponsiveness(AHR).2 Current therapeutic methods for asthma include inhaled corticosteroids andβ2 agonists to relieve asthma syndromes,but these treatments do not change the chronic disease course in patients.Some patients need high doses of inhaled corticosteroids or require long-term daily treatment with oral steroids.3 Therefore,efforts should be targeted towards developing innovative therapeutic strategies to improve patient quality of life and reduce unwanted deaths.One of the advances in the development of future therapies is the use of genetically modified dendritic cells(DCs)to decrease pathological Th2-mediated responses and maintain a disease-modifying effect long term.DC activation is crucial for inducing T cell immunity as well as determining T cell differentiation.4 Importantly,DCs can be cultured in vitro,and large amounts of generated clinical-grade DCs have become available.Additionally,DCs has been shown to be permissive of adenoviral(Ad)vector infection in vitro,and Ad vectors are a promising gene delivery platform for a variety of therapeutic and vaccine applications.5 In this regard,overexpressing immunoregulatory proteins in Ad-modified DCs would be an effective way to suppress Th2 cell immunity and establish an antiallergic response.
