Farm Effect - Translation to Families

Asthma and allergies are the epidemic of the 21st century after a sharp rise in prevalence since the middle of the last century. Around 355 million people worldwide suffer from asthma with significant mortality. Asthma is the most common chronic condition in children – at school age about every 10th child is affected in westernized countries. Likewise, allergic illnesses are very prevalent, around 30-50 % of children are affected. Unfortunately, there is neither cure nor effective prevention and current therapies are often administered over long periods of time - sometimes decades. These treatments are only able to suppress symptoms but cannot halt the progression of disease. But various epidemiological studies show a natural model that can help prevent asthma: children who grow up on farms have a significantly lower risk of developing asthma than children who live in the same rural area but not on farms. But how can we translate this finding back into the families?

With two ongoing visionary projects our team wants to make available for the first time a therapeutic option that protects children from developing asthma. We aim to develop a nasal spray based on the identified substances.

GO-Bio initial (BMBF) – PreventAsthma (until March 2025):

With the funding of the GO-Bio initial program, the feasibility of this approach was investigated. The identified substances were tested for their protective properties in relation to asthma and allergy diseases in relevant in vitro and in vivo models. Based on the promising outcome of this project we now have substances in our hands with which we can move forward to establish a lead compound for further preclinical, toxicological and eventually clinical testing.

ERC Grant – APROSUS:

The vision within this project is to move the fields of microbiome research forward towards in depth characterization of microbe-derived metabolites to better understand their associated asthma- and allergy protective properties by advancing both the experimental and the human population-based studies.

In this interdisciplinary project, Erika von Mutius and her colleagues from the Helmholtz Environmental Health Center, Ali Önder Yildirim and Philippe Schmidt-Kopplin, as well as Michael Sattler from the Molecular Targets and Therapeutics Center and Prof. Dr. Sonja Berensmeier from the Technical University Munich made tremendous progress in understanding the underlying mechanisms by which the farm environment prevents allergic asthma. This lay the ground for translation into innovative and effective prevention strategies to stop the asthma and allergy epidemic. We will continue to explore the mechanisms and the role of microbial metabolites.