Researchers at Albany Medical College, New York received a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study the connection between asthma and the protein nestin. 

Previous research had shown that nestin is an intermediate filament protein expressed when cells divide. At the same time, its function in the tissue that surrounds the trachea and bronchi has been largely unknown.

The researchers said that they will use time-lapse microscopy and a physiological cellular approach and multiple cellular methods to assess how nestin affects the progression of asthma.