Newswise — May is National Allergy and Asthma Awareness Month. If you are planning a story on seasonal allergies or asthma - combined, these conditions affect nearly 50 million Americans - consider calling on experts from the Johns Hopkins Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. With the same physicians performing research and patient care, the Division provides reliable sources to answer your questions about allergy and asthma on topics from the lab to the clinic.
Bruce Bochner, M.D.
Bruce Bochner, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is the director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He treats patients in the Asthma and Allergy Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center campus, and is an active teacher, and lecturer to professionals and patients. In the lab, Dr. Bochner's interests center on the mechanisms behind allergic disease and how the body regulates immune system cells that incite allergic reactions. His latest research showed that activating a protein known as siglec-8, found on the surfaces of some immune cells, can halt the cells' typical jobs of spewing out substances that launch allergic reactions or eliminate these cells altogether.
Peter Creticos, M.D.
Peter Creticos, an associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, serves as the medical director for the Asthma and Allergy Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center campus. He has been involved in teaching, research, and patient care since he arrived at Johns Hopkins in 1981 as a postdoctoral fellow.
Dr. Creticos is active in clinical trials for numerous potential treatments of seasonal allergies and asthma, including protein pharmaceuticals and DNA vaccines. One of his ongoing clinical trials tests the effectiveness of sublingual immunotherapy (placing allergens under the tongue) to desensitize the body to allergens.
Tao Zheng, M.D.
Tao Zheng is an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In her laboratory, Dr. Zheng studies how immune system cells known as Th2 cytokines are involved in allergic skin reactions and in asthma. She has created transgenic mice to study how alterations in a variety of immune system proteins can affect the course of asthma and allergic disease.Dr. Zheng received her medical degree from Tongji Medical University in Wuhan, China and subsequently trained in medicine and allergy/immunology at the Yale School of Medicine. She was recruited to Johns Hopkins in 2004.
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