Professor Howarth has funding from the MRC, National Institute of Health Research, EPSRC and Asthma UK as well as Industrial funding for his research that addresses the understanding and treatment of severe asthma. Much of this work makes use of direct airway sampling at bronchoscopy to obtain samples for the evaluation of the airway microbiome, airway inflammatory status, airway remodelling and to obtain samples for ex vivo cell culture studies. Such studies focus, in collaboration, on bronchial epithelial cells, airway mucosal fibroblasts and alveolar macrophages. These approaches have been used both to compare findings in severe asthma to that in healthy controls and mild asthma as well as to evaluate the impact of standard and novel therapeutic approaches to disease management. On-going work also includes biomarker evaluation and evaluation of novel approaches to lung imaging in airways disease.