Dr. Bruce Klein was recently awarded funding from the Sandler Program for Asthma Research (SPAR) through its Senior Investigator Award program. The award comes with $250,000 per year for three years and is given to senior researchers whose primary research is not in the field of asthma. Dr. Klein’s proposal hypothesized that the principal MÆ receptor that senses chitin have not yet been elucidated; it induces influx of IL-4 producing cells and downstream products that dictate Th2 polarization and function of ab CD4 T-cells, and promotes the development of allergic asthma, during a vulnerable window in the susceptible host. To test this idea, he proposed to identify novel receptors for chitin, investigate receptors known to bind GlcNAc, and define how the activity and loss of these chitin receptors regulates Th2 cells and the pathogenesis of asthma in animal models.