DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): ICAC's goal is to include further development of cockroach allergen immunotherapy and consideration of new allergen immunotherapies; for example to mouse allergens; the development and execution of clinical and mechanistic studies targeted to inner-city asthma phenotypes, and interventions designed to prevent the incidence of asthma or its progression. In addition, the URECA birth cohort study will be continued to the end of the grant, when the participants will range from 14 to 16 years of age, with the goal to provide information on the immunologic basis of late childhood and adolescence-onset asthma, as well as the remission of asthma during the same years.

RELEVANCE: ICAC is a multi-study, multi-center initiative to study the causes of the urban asthma epidemic that afflicts millions of children and to develop treatments to improve control of asthma in this population and for children in general.