| abstract |
An objective of the present invention is to provide a method of testing for bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a method of screening for candidate compounds for treating bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and a pharmaceutical agent for treating bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The present invention identified genes whose expression levels varied between respiratory epithelial cells that had been stimulated by IL-13 to induce the goblet cell differentiation, and unstimulated respiratory epithelial cells. The respiratory epithelial cells were cultured according to the air interface method. The genes were revealed to be useful as markers for testing for bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and screening for therapeutic agents for such diseases. Specifically, the present invention provides methods of testing for bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and methods of screening for compounds to treat the diseases based on the comparison of the expression levels of marker genes identified as described above. |