Asthma is an important public health problem in the U.S., affecting 26 million Americans, and asthma exacerbation continues to account for a substantial proportion of this burden.  The conventional studies have attempted to identify patients with frequent asthma exacerbations using “classic” risk factors — e.g., demographics, socioeconomic status, patient behavior. However, these attempts have failed to fully explain the variations in patients’ morbidity.

Recent advent of gene sequence and computing power have identified several phenotypes in chronic asthma. We combine insights from clinical medicine and omics data (e.g., transcriptome, microbiome)  with advances in systems biology, to predict clinical outcomes and help doctors identify and target patients at risk for frequent asthma exacerbation.