We are very pleased to announce that in 2019, among several collaborations, the Asia Pacific Association of Allergy, Asthma and Clinical Immunology (APAAACI) and the Workshop on Eosinophils in Allergy and Related Diseases (WEA) signed an agreement of collaboration. The first arm of the collaboration is the publication of the proceedings of the WEA scientific meeting in October 2019 in this April issue of our official APAAACI journal Asia Pacific Allergy.
WEA is a scientific society that focuses mainly on eosinophils and allergic inflammation with an annual meeting held in Tokyo, Japan. As one of the leading countries in eosinophil research in the Asia-Pacific region, eosinophil research started as early as late 1980s, nearly immediately after the technique to isolate eosinophils from peripheral blood was established. The first annual meeting of WEA was held in 1988 under the strong leadership of Prof. Sohei Makino and Prof. Takeshi Fukuda (Dokkyo Medical University), Japan, both of who are Past Presidents of APAAACI
In 2019, APAAACI is proud to make a joint collaboration with WEA starting with the publication of the proceedings of the 2019 annual meeting among other collaborative initiatives including the APAAACI eosinophil committee. Here we present the first publication in the April issue of Asia Pacific Allergy as a dedicated issue for selected papers covering different aspects of eosinophil science ranging from mechanisms of eosinophilic inflammation to eosinophilic inflammation in asthma, eosinophilic eosophagitis, urticaria, and impact of environmental factors on eosinophilic inflammation presented at the annual meeting of WEA, Tokyo 2019 held under the leadership of Prof. Nagase, Chairman of the 2019 WEA Annual meeting, Special thanks to our Editor in Chief, Asia Pacific Allergy Journal, Prof. Yoon-Seok Chang (Seoul National University, Korea) for his efforts in editing this special issue.
We believe that this is the beginning of several new initiatives in this field of cell biology of inflammatory cells including eosinophil’s and the mechanisms and novel therapies of allergy and hope that this collaboration will promote this area of science in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.