Research profile: Professor Sebastian Johnston

Sebastian Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London. His main area of research is acute attacks of asthma. Sebastian Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London.

He is also a researcher at the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma

Asthma UK is supporting his current research into acute attacks of asthma.

Why is asthma so interesting as a research issue?

Asthma is extremely common: one in ten children and one in 12 adults currently receive treatment for the condition. Asthma is also increasing. This means that asthma is the commonest respiratory condition and that it is likely to become even more common as time goes by.

My work concentrates on the relationship between virus infections and asthma. We have discovered that virus infections cause the vast majority of acute attacks of asthma. We are now trying to find out why.

My work has shown that people with asthma have relatively weak anti-viral immunity and that this is one of the reasons why they have much worse reactions to respiratory virus infections than people who don’t have asthma.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

I love the process of discovery and am very fortunate to be in a job that involves efforts to discover new things almost on a daily basis!

My current work is focused on trying to identify exactly why people with asthma have weak anti-viral immune responses and to use this information in developing new therapies to boost these responses. I hope that these therapies will protect people with asthma against virus infections thereby preventing acute attacks. They may also prevent the development of asthma in the first place. There is clearly a long way to go but these are very exciting possibilities.

How does Asthma UK help your research?

Asthma UK and its supporters have helped my research through providing me with research grant funding throughout my career. It helped sponsor my initial studies, which showed that virus infections cause the vast majority of asthma attacks. It has continued to fund my more recent work, which has demonstrated that people with asthma have relatively weak antiviral immune responses.

It continues to fund my work trying to find the reasons for these relatively weak responses and to develop new therapies to boost these responses.

What do you hope to achieve as a result of your research?

I am aiming to develop new treatments to boost anti-viral immunity in people with asthma, to protect them against developing acute asthma attacks. I also hope that when used in early childhood, this treatment will prevent the development of asthma in the first place and reverse the increase in asthma over the last couple of decades.

The main focus of my research work is very clearly aimed at improving the health of people with asthma. However, the treatments that I am developing should also be useful in the treatment/prevention of common colds and also in treatment/prevention of acute attacks of other respiratory conditions such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema. I therefore hope that this work will be of wider benefit than treating asthma alone.


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