Our aim is to understand the interaction between individual predisposition, environment and the development of allergy with the ultimate goal of increasing our knowledge of the basic mechanisms of allergies and providing insights for allergy prevention or treatment.

• Our first field of interest covers the effects of climate change on pollen-induced allergic reactions, in particular allergic diseases.
• A second field of activities lies in studying the influence of both environmental pollution, especially anthropogenic particles and irritant gases, and industrial engineered nanoparticles in allergic lung and skin inflammation. This also includes recent studies focussing on indoor pollution.
• Third, our activities focus on investigating the combination of the above listed risk factors with individual susceptibility factors like obesity on allergy development.

To identify the effects of said metabolic and/or environmental risk factors, several mouse models for the evaluation of allergic lung and skin diseases have been and are currently developed.