About the Authors

Nicolas Mercado

Affiliation Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Amir Hakim

Affiliations Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, Biomedical Research Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Yoshiki Kobayashi

Affiliation Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Sally Meah

Affiliations Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, Biomedical Research Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Omar S. Usmani

Affiliations Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, Biomedical Research Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Kian Fan Chung

Affiliations Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, Biomedical Research Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Peter J. Barnes

Affiliation Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Kazuhiro Ito

k.ito@imperial.ac.uk

Affiliation Airway Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

KI is currently an employee of RespiVert Ltd with honorary contract of Imperial College. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. All other authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NM KFC PJB KI. Performed the experiments: NM YK AH. Analyzed the data: NM YK AH KI. Wrote the paper: NM OU KFC PJB KI. Recruitment of patients: SM KFC.