Drugs (2014) 74:719728

DOI 10.1007/s40265-014-0213-9

CURRENT OPINION

Defining Phenotypes in Asthma: A Step Towards Personalized

Medicine
Kian Fan Chung

Published online: 6 May 2014

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

Abstract Asthma is a common disease with a complex

pathophysiology. It can present in various clinical forms
and with different levels of severity. Unbiased cluster
analytic methods have unravelled several phenotypes in
cohorts representative of the whole spectrum of severity.
Clusters of severe asthma include those on high-dose corticosteroid treatment, often with both inhaled and oral
treatment, usually associated with severe airflow obstruction. Phenotypes with concordance between symptoms and
sputum eosinophilia have been reported, including an
eosinophilic inflammation-predominant group with few
symptoms and late-onset disease who have a high prevalence of rhinosinusitis, aspirin sensitivity, and exacerbations. Sputum eosinophilia is also a biomarker that can
predict therapeutic responses to antibody-based treatments
to block the effects of the T-helper (Th)-2 cytokine,
interleukin (IL)-5. Low Th2-expression has been predictive
of poor therapeutic response to inhaled corticosteroid
therapy. Current asthma schedules emphasise a step-up
approach to treating asthma in relation to increasing
severity, but, in more severe disease, phenotyping or endotyping of asthma will be necessary to determine new
treatment strategies as severe asthma is recognized as being
a particularly heterogeneous disease. Much less is known
about non-eosinophilic asthma. Phenotypic characterisation of corticosteroid insensitivity and chronic airflow
obstruction of severe asthma is also needed. Phenotype-

driven treatment of asthma will be further boosted by the

advent of transcriptomic and proteomic technologies, with
the application of systems biology or medicine approaches
to defining phenotypes and biomarkers of disease and
therapeutic response. This will pave the way towards personalized medicine and healthcare for asthma.

Key Points
Unbiased approaches to classifying asthma will
continue to lead to the identification of distinct
phenotypes linked to known mechanisms. A Th2high identifies patients with high eosinophilia and
good therapeutic response to corticosteroids.
Other characteristic traits of severe asthma include
non-eosinophilic asthma, corticosteroid insensitivity,
obesity-associated and exacerbation-prone, and these
need to be linked to mechanisms.
Newer treatments for asthma will emerge from better
endotyping, and will be targeted to specific
phenotypes. This will lead to a future world of
personalized medicine in asthma.

1 Introduction
K. F. Chung (&)
Experimental Studies, National Heart and Lung Institute,
Imperial College London, Dovehouse St, London SW3 6LY, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
K. F. Chung
Royal Brompton NIHR Biomedical Research Unit, London, UK

Asthma is a complex disease. Although the basis of asthma

remains uncertain, it should be considered as a disease with
multifactorial components that can present in different
ways. Clinicians have long been aware of the varied presentation of asthma and of the differences in responsiveness to currently available treatments. However, despite

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this recognition, the treatment approaches for asthma have

been uniformly applied irrespective of type of asthma.
First, the guidelines for asthma management that were first
widely disseminated in the 1990s have focused on a uniform step-wise escalation of treatments (mostly inhaled
corticosteroids and b-adrenergic bronchodilators) that were
deemed to be mostly effective in all patients with asthma
irrespective of type or etiology, and the stepwise approach
was mainly aimed at controlling severity of disease with
the lowest amount of medications. Second, attempts at
phenotyping asthma have been limited to descriptive
impressions of groups of patients into categories that only
relate to a small proportion of asthmatic patients [1].
The realization that there was a core of patients with
asthma that did not respond to existing therapies, classified
as severe asthma [2, 3] with diverse presentations, has
driven interest in using unbiased approaches to phenotype
the disease, initially in terms of essential clinical and
physiologic features. Increasingly, inflammatory markers
are being used with the aim of defining and understanding
the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying each phenotype (with the hypothesis that each phenotype is different in terms of its underlying pathophysiological
mechanisms). This approach of defining mechanistic phenotypes has been termed endotyping [4, 5], and it will be
most useful at defining targets for the development of new
therapies and treatments for well-defined phenotypes or
endotypes of asthma.
This article reviews recent published work in terms of
unbiased approaches to phenotyping asthma and emphasizes how the phenotyping exercise is an important step to
formalizing new treatment paradigms for asthma, particularly severe asthma where a recognized unmet need is the
discovery and use of new effective treatments.

2 Defining Phenotypes of Asthma by Cluster Analysis

The application of unbiased statistical approaches has led
to the definition of several phenotypes of asthma and represents a major advance of the last few years. Cluster
analysis is a statistical approach in which data objects
based only on information found in the data that describe
the objects and their relationships are grouped in such a
way that objects in the same group are more similar to each
other than to those in other groups. Models that have been
most commonly used for asthma phenotyping have included the hierarchical clustering builds models based on
distance connectivity, and the k-means algorithm representing each cluster by a single mean vector. A recent
study warned that the use of different unsupervised statistical methods and different variable sets and encoding can
lead to multiple and inconsistent subtypes of asthma [6],

K. F. Chung

and has advocated that a more careful selection of markers

should be used that would be consistent across all cohorts
analyzed. However, there has now been some degree of
concordance between the results of several cluster analyses
that have been published so far.
The Severe Asthma Research Program (SARP) adult and
pediatric cohorts [7, 8], and the UK Leicester adult cohort
[9] have used hierarchical cluster analysis while the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) and
Epidemiological Study of the Genetics and Environment of
Asthma (EGEA) European cohorts [10] have chosen a
model-based clustering analysis to define clusters of asthma
using cohorts that express a range of asthma severities from
mild to severe. Despite differences in clinical variables used
for analysis, these studies report phenotypes that have
common, although not entirely similar, features (Table 1).
Such analyses have identified patients with little airflow
obstruction and activity of disease, patients with early age
of onset of disease with an atopic background, and a more
severe group of asthma patients associated with adult-onset
disease and active disease. Thus, age of onset of disease,
lung function, and atopic state featured highly in these
clusters or phenotypes. Such clusters have been also
reported from cohorts in Korea and Japan [11, 12]. An
analysis of adult asthmatics attending a hospital-based
asthma clinic in New York reported clusters that were
qualitatively similar to those described for SARP [13], as
did an analysis of childhood asthma clusters in the US
Childhood Asthma Research and Education (CARE) network clinical trials [14]. In the Outcomes and Treatment
Regimens (TENOR) cluster analysis, five clusters distinguished by sex, atopic status, and non-White race were
reported in an adolescent and adult cohort and in a pediatric
cohort, but, while passive smoke exposure was a distinguishing feature in children, it was aspirin sensitivity in the
adolescent and adult cohort [15].
Clearly, there were clusters that related to more severe
disease. For example, clusters 4 and 5 of the adult SARP
cohort described patients on high-dose inhaled corticosteroid therapy, often taken together with oral corticosteroid
treatment, usually associated with severe airflow obstruction. In a small analysis of refractory asthma in Korean
patients [16], four clusters were described, with three of the
four closely resembling clusters 4 and 5 of SARP. The
Korean cluster 4 consisted predominantly of male cigarette
smokers, representing the influence of cigarette smoking on
increasing asthma severity. In the TENOR study, the fifth
cluster, described in adolescents and adults, was associated
with aspirin sensitivity, in primarily White, female, and
atopic patients with late-onset asthma, and these patients
were more likely than any patient in the other four clusters
to experience exacerbations [15]. The CARE Network
reported replication of asthma clusters reported by the

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Table 1 Subphenotypes or clusters of adult asthma identified by cluster analysis

Severe Asthma Research Program (SARP) Adult Cohort [7]
Cluster 1

Early-onset atopic asthma with normal lung function treated with two or fewer controller medications and minimal healthcare
utilization

Cluster 2

Early-onset atopic asthma and preserved lung function but increased medication requirements and healthcare utilization

Cluster 3

Mostly older obese women with late-onset non-atopic asthma, moderate reductions in FEV1, and frequent oral corticosteroid use
to manage exacerbations

Cluster 4 and
5

Severe airflow obstruction with bronchodilator responsiveness but differ in their ability to attain normal lung function, age of
asthma onset, atopic status, and use of oral corticosteroids

Leicester: Primary care cohort [9]

Cluster 1

Early-onset atopic asthma, with airway dysfunction and eosinophilic inflammation; increased number of hospitalizations

Cluster 2

Non-eosinophilic inflammation. Obese, female predominant

Cluster 3

Benign asthma with little evidence of active disease. No significant airway hyper-responsiveness in 58 % of cluster

Leicester: secondary care [9]

Cluster 1

Early-onset atopic asthma, with airway dysfunction and eosinophilic inflammation; increased number of hospitalizations

Cluster 2

Non-eosinophilic inflammation. Obese, female predominant

Cluster 3

Early-onset, symptom predominant with minimal eosinophilic disease

Cluster 4

Eosinophilic inflammation-predominant with few symptoms, late-onset disease

ECRHS II [10]
Phenotype A

Active-treated allergic childhood-onset asthma. Atopic asthma, active disease, greater bronchial hyper-responsiveness

Phenotype B

Active treated adult-onset asthma. Older subjects with adult-onset asthma. Female, active disease. Asthma attack in previous
12 months

Phenotype C

Inactive/mild untreated allergic asthma

Phenotype D

Inactive/mild untreated non-allergic asthma

EGEA 2 [10]
Phenotype E

Active treated allergic childhood-onset disease

Phenotype F

Active treated adult-onset asthma

Phenotype G

Inactive/mild untreated allergic childhood-onset asthma

Phenotype H

Inactive/mild untreated allergic adult-onset asthma

ECRHS European Community Respiratory Health Survey, FEV1 forced expiratory volume in 1 sec

SARP study in children [8] and found that one cluster

characterized by early-onset asthma with severe lung
function was associated with the best response to the
combination therapy of fluticasone and salmeterol [14].
New clinical groups, such as those associated with
obesity, have also been defined in both the SARP and
Leicester cohorts. This has now been confirmed in other
analyses that have specifically examined the contribution
of obesity [17, 18]. Two clusters of obese individuals were
described: obese uncontrolled and obese well-controlled,
and these asthma clusters differed from one another with
regard to age of asthma onset, measures of asthma symptoms and control, exhaled nitric oxide concentration, and
airway hyper-responsiveness, but were similar with regard
to measures of lung function, airway eosinophilia, and
serum immunoglobulin (Ig)-E [17]. A group of obese
women with late-onset asthma and frequent symptoms with
high healthcare use, but with low sputum eosinophil
counts, has also been described [19].
The stability of phenotypes with time remains unclear and
has yet to be extensively studied. One study has looked at

clinical clusters of a cohort of asthmatics over a 10-year period

and concluded that, overall, the clusters were stable, since
phenotypes observed 10 years apart showed strong similarities, with the probability of remaining in the same asthma
phenotype at both times varying between 54 and 88 % [20].

3 Current Treatments for Asthma

Combined inhaled therapy with a bronchodilator, a longacting b-adrenergic agonist (LABA), plus an anti-inflammatory agent, a corticosteroid, has become the most
effective mainstay treatment of asthma. This forms the
backbone of the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA)
guidelines, where inhaled combination LABA and corticosteroids are used at steps 3 and above for control
of asthma (http://www.ginasthma.org/documents/1/PocketGuide-for-Asthma-Management-and-Prevention). The efficacy of such treatments has been examined in studies of
adult asthmatic patients who are on low to high doses of
inhaled corticosteroid (ICS), where the addition of a LABA

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reduced the exacerbation rates requiring oral corticosteroids, improved lung function (forced expiratory volume in
1 sec [FEV1]) and decreased the need for rescue shortacting b-agonists [1]. With combination LABA and ICS,
asthma control can be reasonably achieved in *68 % of
patients, with the least effectiveness in the most severe
group [21], indicating that such treatment, even at the
maximal doses allowable, is not effective in all asthmatic
patients. With increasing severity and poor control of
asthma, other controller medications are added to the
combination LABA and ICS therapy, such as slow-release
theophylline and leukotriene inhibitors [22]. Finally, at the
highest step (5), the addition of oral therapy with corticosteroids is advocated, and a new class of therapy, an antiIgE humanized monoclonal antibody, is now also used as
an additive treatment for severe allergic asthma.
Even with maximization of such therapies, between 5
and 10 % of patients with asthma are refractory to these
treatments and such patients have been labelled as severe
asthma or refractory-resistant asthma [2, 3]. It is in this
group of patients that more efficacious treatments are needed. It is now becoming evident that asthma, particularly
severe asthma, cannot be considered as one disease but as a
heterogeneous collection of several different phenotypes
that could be determined by different pathway mechanisms.
The idea that all asthma treatments are beneficial to all
asthmatics is seen in most current guidelines, but this is less
applicable in the severe asthma patient. The recently published joint European Respiratory Society and American
Thoracic Society severe asthma guidelines have recognized
the heterogeneity of severe asthma and proposes targeted
therapies for defined phenotypes of asthma [23]. Recommendations regarding the determination of sputum eosinophilia to help in directing treatments for severe asthma have
been made; use of sputum eosinophilia may be useful in
pinpointing the patients who may benefit from treatment
with T-helper (Th)-2 cytokine-targeted therapies.

4 Phenotyping/Endotyping and Responsiveness

to Corticosteroid Therapies
Phenotyping for predicting responsiveness to therapies has
been driven by the established observation that asthma
characterized by eosinophilia is usually responsive to ICS.
Increased sputum eosinophilia has been associated with
exacerbations and decreased asthma control in some asthmatic subjects [24]. ICS use usually decreases sputum
eosinophilia and improves asthma control [2527].
Cluster analyses that have included sputum eosinophilia
and more recently concomitant sputum neutrophilia
have been useful in defining corticosteroid-sensitive and
-insensitive groups. The Leicester cohort of patients with

K. F. Chung

refractory asthma showed discordance between symptoms

and the presence of sputum eosinophilia [9]. One cluster
was that of an early-onset, symptom-predominant group
with minimal eosinophilic disease, with a high prevalence
of obesity and female gender, while the other cluster
consisted of an eosinophilic inflammation-predominant
group with few symptoms, late-onset disease, and a greater
proportion of males, with a high prevalence of rhinosinusitis, aspirin sensitivity, and exacerbations. In the
Amsterdam analysis of adult-onset asthma, the cluster
associated with severe eosinophilic inflammation had persistent airflow obstruction with low symptom scores, while
the low sputum eosinophil scores were seen in obese
women with frequent symptoms and high healthcare utilization [19]. The more recent SARP cluster analysis, which
included both measures of sputum eosinophils and neutrophils, found that mild-to-moderate allergic asthma was
associated with minimal or eosinophil-predominant sputum
inflammation, while moderate-to-severe asthma was linked
to neutrophil-predominant or mixed granulocytic inflammation, indicating the potential importance of neutrophils
in more severe disease. This study also found that the
presence of neutrophilic inflammation could be an indicator of poor responsiveness to corticosteroid therapy [28].
An important proportion of mild-to-moderate asthma
subjects do not respond, or respond poorly, to a middle
dose of ICS in terms of improvement in FEV1 [29].
Increased sputum neutrophilia may indicate corticosteroid
insensitivity [30], and smoking asthmatics and obese
asthmatics are more likely to develop corticosteroid
insensitivity [31, 32]. In the SARP cohort, the group of
patients with severe asthma on systemic corticosteroids
that could be considered to have corticosteroid-insensitivity were more likely to report a diagnosis of recurrent
bronchitis, to have an FEV1 of \60 % of their predicted
value, a higher fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) and
a lower forced vital capacity (FVC)% predicted [33]. Work
on cells from patients with corticosteroid-dependent
asthma has highlighted some of the mechanisms. Activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase [34, 35],
inability to recruit the histone deacetylase 2 to the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) transcriptional complex [36],
reduced effectiveness of the ligand for GR binding [37],
and an increase in the expression of the spliced variant of
GR, GR-b, [38] have been proposed. Further characterization of this phenotype is required.

5 Eosinophilic and Non-Eosinophilic (Neutrophilic)

Asthma
The prevalence of sputum eosinophilia in asthma has been
examined, and the eosinophilic asthma subphenotype

Asthma Phenotypes and Personalised Medicine

constitutes 36 % of subjects with asthma not taking an ICS

and 17 % of ICS-treated subjects with asthma in a recent
series [39]. Anti-inflammatory therapy with corticosteroids
caused significant improvements in airflow obstruction in
eosinophilic asthma, but not in persistently noneosinophilic
asthma. Non-eosinophilic asthma was more predominant in
mild-to-moderate asthma, just as neutrophilic asthma is
also predominant in severe refractory asthma [30, 40].
Eosinophil and neutrophil sputum numbers show wide
variability in severe asthma, with patients demonstrating
none to very high levels of either cell type [30, 40]. The
investigation by Baines et al. [41] of asthma phenotypes,
using gene expression profiling of induced sputum and
unsupervised hierarchical clustering of these expression
profiles, has led to the description of three phenotypes: (1)
chronic airflow obstruction and less well controlled asthma,
increased exhaled nitric oxide, and sputum eosinophils; (2)
airflow obstruction and higher sputum neutrophils; and (3)
higher sputum macrophages and lower eosinophils and
neutrophils, and lung function in normal range. Genes in
the interleukin (IL)-1 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-a/
nuclear factor-jB pathways were also overexpressed and
correlated with clinical parameters and neutrophilic airway
inflammation. In severe asthma patients, mixed neutrophilia and eosinophilia have been shown to be linked with
lower lung function and higher frequency of daily wheeze
and healthcare utilization [42]. The mechanisms behind
these diverse inflammatory profiles are likely to be complex, but a neutrophilic response may signify a non-Th2driven mechanism and, most likely, non-steroid-responsive
asthma. Bacterial colonization in the airways of patients
with severe asthma could contribute to neutrophilic asthma
[43, 44]. Defective phagocytosis of bacteria or of apoptotic
cells by macrophages has also been reported in severe
asthma [45, 46]. Corticosteroids themselves can contribute
to the neutrophilia to some extent and even Th1 factors
could play a role [47, 48]. Th17 cells have also been
implicated as a cause of neutrophilia in severe asthma,
perhaps even contributing to corticosteroid insensitivity
[49]. Therefore, there may be many underlying causes of a
neutrophilic asthma, which may also indicate a more
severe asthma.
Woodruff and colleagues [50], by examining the gene
signature of airway epithelial brushings divided mildmoderate asthmatics into Th2-high and Th2-low groups,
according to the degree of expression of IL-13-inducible
genes, periostin, chloride channel regulator 1, and serpin
peptidase inhibitor. The Th2-high asthmatic patients had a
greater degree of bronchial hyper-responsiveness; higher
serum IgE levels; greater blood and airway eosinophilia,
subepithelial fibrosis, and airway mucin gene expression
[51], and responded well to ICS. Those with a low Th2
signature showed little or no response to ICS treatment.

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Th2-gene signatures can also be obtained by performing

reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)
of sputum cells and can be used to denote Th-2-high
patients with asthma [52]. The extent to which the presence
of eosinophils indicates a high-Th2 signature is not known.

6 Biologic Treatments Targeted at Specific Phenotypes

Advances in our understanding of the pathophysiology of
asthma has led to new treatments based on targeting
eosinophil and immune/inflammatory pathways initiated
through Th2 CD4? T-cell activation with the production of
IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13 [53, 54]. Th2 cytokines are expressed
in bronchial submucosa of patients with asthma and contribute to airway inflammation, triggering the activation
and recruitment of IgE antibody-producing B cells, mast
cells, and eosinophils. Expression profiles of airway epithelial cells from asthma subjects indicated that those with
a Th2 signature have characteristics of an allergic inflammatory response [21]. Targets of Th2 pathway have
included IgE, IL-5, IL-4, IL-13, and IL-4R. For noneosinophilic targets, the main focus has been on neutrophils. Experience with the specific blocking antibodies has
emphasized the importance of targeting the right patient for
maximal therapeutic effects [55].
6.1 Targeting Eosinophilic Inflammation
6.1.1 Anti-IgE Antibody, Omalizumab
Omalizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody that
binds to the high-affinity IgE receptor present on mast cells
and basophils, leading to a reduction in circulating IgE and
preventing mast cells and basophils from releasing mediators when in contact with allergens. In allergic patients
defined by raised serum IgE levels and evidence of allergy
to one or more aeroallergens with inadequately controlled
severe persistent allergic asthma, despite high-dose ICS
and LABA therapy, and often additional therapy, omalizumab significantly reduced the rate of severe exacerbations and emergency visits, together with an improvement
in asthma quality-of-life scores, with improved symptoms
[5658]. Asthmatics with high levels of exhaled nitric
oxide levels, peripheral blood eosinophils, and serum
periostin showed greatest reduction in exacerbations in
response to omalizumab [59].
6.1.2 Anti-Interleukin (IL)-5 Antibody
IL-5 is a Th2 cytokine that is essential for the terminal
differentiation, maturation, and survival of eosinophils.
The anti-IL5 antibody, mepolizumab, was not effective in

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an unselected cohort of adult asthma patients [60], but in

severe asthma patients with persistent sputum eosinophilia,
two anti-IL-5 antibodies, mepolizumab and reslizumab,
decreased exacerbations, oral corticosteroid use, and
improved symptoms and lung function [6163]. A larger
study with mepolizumab showed efficacy in patients with
recurrent severe asthma exacerbations and eosinophilic
inflammation in reducing exacerbation rates, without
improvement in FEV1 and quality of life [64].
6.1.3 Anti-IL-4Ra Antibody
IL-4 activates Th2 cells, causes isotype class switching of B
cells towards IgE synthesis, and is involved in mast cell
recruitment. IL-4 binds to IL-4Ra within two different types
of receptor (type I and type II) that leads to the signalling of
both IL-4 and IL-13 [65]. AMG 317, a human monoclonal
antibody to IL-4Ra that blocks both IL-4 and IL-13 pathways,
did not demonstrate clinical efficacy in moderate to severe
asthma [66]. However, in patients with persistent, moderateto-severe asthma and elevated eosinophil levels (either in
blood or sputum) who used ICS and LABAs, dupilumab (a
human monoclonal antibody to IL4-Ra) was associated with
fewer asthma exacerbations when LABAs and ICS were
withdrawn, and with improved lung function and reduced
levels of Th2-associated inflammatory markers [67].
6.1.4 Anti-IL-13 Antibody
IL-13 together with IL-4 can regulate IgE synthesis and has
an important role in mucus hyperplasia and airway hyperresponsiveness. A monoclonal antibody to IL-13, lebrikizumab, improved FEV1 in moderately severe asthmatic
adults stratified according to a Th2-low and Th2-high status, without affecting exacerbations and asthma symptoms
[68]; those who responded had elevated serum periostin
levels, a proposed surrogate marker of Th2 activity, or had
raised levels of nitric oxide in the exhaled breath. Another
anti-IL-13 antibody, tralokinumab, did not improve
symptoms but resulted in a non-significant increase in
FEV1 when compared with placebo, with better effects in
patients with detectable sputum IL-13 levels [69].
6.2 Non-Eosinophilic Inflammation
6.2.1 CXCR2 Antagonist
CXCL8 (IL-8) is a chemokine involved in the chemoattraction and activation of neutrophils through the CXCR2
receptor, particularly in severe asthma. A CXCR2 antagonist, SCH527123, reduced sputum neutrophilia in severe
adult asthma, and modestly lowered the number of mild
exacerbations, but without improving asthma control [70].

K. F. Chung

6.2.2 Macrolide Antibiotic Therapy

Macrolide antibiotics have been used in severe asthma on
the basis that there may be bacteria underlying the increase
in severity [43, 44] and that these antibiotics possess antineutrophilic effects. Clarithromycin, as an add-on treatment to ICS in a group of patients with severe asthma that
were unstratified, reduced sputum neutrophils and IL-8
levels, and delivered an improvement in quality-of-life
measures without changes in FEV1 [71]. In an exacerbation-prone severe asthma cohort where patients were
beforehand stratified into eosinophilic and non-eosinophilic
groups, azithromycin was associated with a lower rate of
severe exacerbations and lower respiratory tract infections
than placebo in subjects with non-eosinophilic severe
asthma defined by a blood eosinophilia of B200/ll [72].
6.2.3 Anti-IL-17R Antibody
Brodalumab, a human anti-IL-17 receptor A monoclonal
antibody, had no effect in subjects with inadequately
controlled moderate to severe asthma taking ICS [73].
These patients were not otherwise stratified, but a post hoc
examination of subgroups did not reveal any group that
responded particularly well to this treatment.

7 Phenotype-Driven Treatment, Systems Biology,

and Personalized Medicine
Phenotype-driven treatment will gradually become a reality. The question is how refined or deep do we need to
proceed in terms of phenotyping. For example, it should be
important to refine the different biomarkers that will
determine the best responders to each targeted therapy
developed for the Th2-high patient. On the other hand,
much less work has been done to define non-Th2 asthma
and non-eosinophilic asthma. However, this area is gathering pace with the advent of high throughput -omics
technologies, which generate molecular profiles from biospecimens that can be translated into clinical tests that may
be useful for guiding management decisions. This will no
doubt increase the reality of phenotype-driven treatment
and ultimately lead towards personalized care in asthma.
This journey is just beginning for asthma.
Demonstration of efficacy of new therapies will depend
in part on the precision by which patients can be endotyped
for specific therapies [74]. Endotyping has been confined to
measurements such as sputum eosinophils, exhaled breath
markers such as nitric oxide, and mediators in blood such
as serum periostin or blood eosinophils [75]. Sputum
eosinophils and serum periostin could define a particular
subset of patients who may respond well to certain

Asthma Phenotypes and Personalised Medicine

therapies such as the anti-Th2 approaches using anti-IL5 or

anti-IL-13 antibodies. Use of the Th2 signature derived
from airway epithelial cells could be used to choose
patients who would respond to ICS therapy; exhaled breath
levels of nitric oxide could be used as a surrogate marker
for therapeutic responsiveness to corticosteroid therapy
[76]. Serum periostin is a biomarker that could replace the
use of epithelial cell expression of Th-2 cytokines, and it
has been shown to correlate with airway eosinophilia [77].
On the other hand, serum periostin has also been shown in
a Japanese asthma cohort on ICS treatment to denote those
with chronic airflow obstruction [78]. This indicates that
biomarker studies need to be confirmed in independent
cohorts. More validated markers are needed for noneosinophilic asthma. Using the percentage of neutrophils in
induced sputum may not be the best biomarker for neutrophilic asthma. Recently, a raised level of hydrogen sulphide in induced sputum has been proposed as a potential
marker for neutrophilic asthma, associated with chronic
airflow obstruction [79].
The availability of high-throughput biological data has
now opened up an important avenue for the discovery of
biomarkers useful to delineate phenotypes and to predict
therapeutic response. Biologic processes involved in
inflammation, immunity, cell cycle, apoptosis, or metabolism will need to be linked to the clinical and phenotypic
expression of asthma. Analysis of clinical, physiologic and
genomic, transcriptomic, lipidomic and proteomic data will
provide a more complex but more definitive phenotypic
representation of the patients disease. In addition, epigenetic mechanisms may modulate environmental effects,
such as road traffic pollution and cigarette smoking, which
can influence the development and course of asthma [80].
We have reported recently that severe asthma is associated
with the activation of blood CD8? T-cells but not CD4?
T-cells, and that this was correlated with the down-regulation of the micro-RNAs miR-146a/b and miR-28-5p, as well
as changes in the expression of lncRNA species [81]. In a
proteomic analysis of bronchial biopsies from subjects with
asthma, more than 1,800 proteins were identified, linked to
acute phase response signalling, cell-to-cell signaling, and
tissue development associations [82]. Furthermore, protein
protein interactions involved in inflammation and cellular
proliferation signalling have been modelled mathematically
and used to predict new drug targets in asthma [83]. The
Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)-funded project on
Unbiased Biomarkers of Respiratory Diseases (UBIOPRED) is using a systems biology approach to phenotype
severe asthma and find new targets for therapy [84].
Systems biology is a strategy to obtain information from
complex quantitative biological data, and systems medicine is the similar counterpart applied to information from
quantitative data related to complex diseases such as

725

asthma. Collection and analysis of clinical and physiologic

parameters, and of high-throughput data from genomics,
transcriptomic, lipidomic and proteomic analyses using
complex statistical and computational methods form the
basis of systems biology and medicine [85]. This approach
has been used to demonstrate that different combinations of
genomic and proteomic signatures can be used to define
subphenotypes of breast cancer and chronic lymphocytic
leukemia and determine whether these phenotypes are
linked to the development or progression of disease or
indicate responsiveness to specific interventions [86].
Much more work is needed in terms of more precise and
relevant endotyping of the asthma patient that could be
delivered through the new -omics science. More targetted
specific treatments are also needed, which could also come
from -omics technology and analysis. Being able to endotype the patient with severe asthma will allow for a more
precise and rationale way of getting these specific treatments to the individual patient, and this will be the first step
towards personalized medicine [85]. The challenge of
delivering the benefits of personalized medicine to the
patient remains high [87], but this is the roadmap by which
the right medications will be delivered to the right patient.

8 Conclusion
Clinicians have always placed a high value on individualized treatments, and the time has come for more personalized medicine in a disease as complex as asthma. In the
field of asthma, there has been a conventional one size fits
all approach in terms of the treatment of asthma. However,
we are now getting more tools to approach personalized
medicine for asthma such as the validated measures of
activity and severity of asthma [88], and with the definition
of severe asthma using control measures of asthma [23].
The recent addition of biomarkers that characterize the
eosinophilic phenotype and that predicts response to specific therapies will add to the increasing confidence of
delivering more personalized management for asthma,
particularly for severe asthma.
Acknowledgments The author has no potential conflicts of interest
to declare in relation to the contents of this review. The author is
funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative in terms of the
UBIOPRED project, which is looking into a systems biology
approach to severe asthma. No funding was obtained for the writing
of this manuscript.

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