National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Denver, CO

— -- At National Jewish, one of our major missions is to advance clinical care through research -- both clinical research and basic science research.

One example is trying to turn off the allergic response. Many people are familiar with allergy shots or immunotherapy. And what we are trying to do at National Jewish is understand the mechanisms whereby such shots might work to make people tolerant to certain allergens, and also to study new modes administrating these allergens to turn off the allergic response.

For example, traditionally, allergy shots were given by injection on a regular basis. We're now investigating the ability to do the same thing using oral medications, actually something called sublingual immunotherapy where the allergens are given sublingually, and we're now testing the outcomes to see how effective they are in preventing things such as hay fever, other forms of allergic rhinitis and other forms of allergic disease.