LGALS3 and allergic asthma: In contrast to the pro-inflammatory role ascribed to endogenous Gal-3, studies by other investigators have shown that gene therapy with Gal-3-encoding plasmid DNA can suppress eosinophil infiltration and normalize pulmonary function in acute as well as chronic settings of allergic asthma (70, 71) by negatively regulating gene expression of suppressors of cytokine signaling 1 and 3, which play an important role in controlling the Th1–Th2 balance (72).