Airway epithelial cells activated a panel of antimicrobial genes in a β-glucan-mediated response to A. fumigatus (Evans et al., 2010; Sun et al., 2012), and secreted TNF-α, IL-8 (CXCL-8) and GM-CSF (Sun et al., 2012), indicating an important role for these cells in neutrophil recruitment that is essential for protection from invasive infection (Bonnett et al., 2006; Mircescu et al., 2009). This evidence concerns the gene CXCL8 and infection.