The acronym AIREWAY II (Importance and interaction of Allergy, Infections and Respiratory Environmental exposures in the development and chronicity of lower and upper airWAY diseases) describes the global objective of this project, and builds further on our P6/35 AIREWAY project that was initiated in 2007. With this interuniversity collaboration, we will further unravel the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying lower (asthma and COPD) and upper (chronic rhinosinusitis and nasal polyposis) airway diseases, with a particular attention for the heterogeneity of these diseases, by combining molecular expertise, mouse models and human samples from the different partners of the consortium. Findings from basic research using experimental animal models will be validated by translational research on precious human samples. Vice versa, hypotheses generated from observations in man will be tested at a molecular level by using animal models in vivo and human cell cultures in vitro.