Hypoxia plays an important role in development, cellular homeostasis, and pathological conditions, such as cancer and stroke. There is also growing evidence that hypoxia is an important modulator of the inflammatory process. Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) are a family of proteins that regulate the cellular response to oxygen deficit, and loss of HIFs impairs inflammatory cell function. There is little known, however, about the role of epithelial-derived HIF signaling in modulating inflammation. Cobalt is capable of eliciting an allergic response and promoting HIF signaling. To characterize the inflammatory function of epithelialderived HIF in response to inhaled cobalt, a conditional lung-specific HIF1␣, the most ubiquitously expressed HIF, deletion mouse, was created. Control mice showed classic signs of metal-induced injury following cobalt exposure, including fibrosis and neutrophil infiltration. In contrast, HIF1␣-deficient mice displayed a Th2 response that resembled asthma, including increased eosinophilic infiltration, mucus cell metaplasia, and chitinase-like protein expression. The results suggest that epithelial-derived HIF signaling has a critical role in establishing a tissue's inflammatory response, and compromised HIF1␣ signaling biases the tissue towards a Th2-mediated reaction. deletion mouse LUNG DISEASES, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, involve a large inflammatory component. The lung's response to allergens involves a complex interplay between resident inflammatory and epithelial cells, cytokine signaling, and the environmental conditions within the tissue. One of the critical environmental features that can impact the inflammatory process is hypoxia.Hypoxia, a decrease in available oxygen reaching the tissues of the body, has profound cellular and metabolic consequences. The cellular response to hypoxia is regulated by a family of transcription factors called the hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) (3). HIFs are primarily regulated at the level of protein stability by a family of prolyl hydroxylases. These prolyl hydroxylase domain (PHD) proteins are members of a broader family of non-heme, iron-, and 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases (7). Cobalt has been shown to inhibit PHDs, and this inhibition causes very similar transcriptional outputs to that of hypoxia (24,28). Recent research using human peripheral blood mononuclear cells has shown that this transcriptional overlap applies to tungsten carbide-cobalt particles, linking hard metal lung disease to hypoxia signaling (17).HIF1␣ is the most ubiquitously expressed and widely studied HIF isoform. HIF1␣ heterodimerizes with the aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator (ARNT, also known as HIF1) forming the functional transcription factor HIF1. HIF1 regulates the expression of more than 100 genes, including genes for glycolytic enzymes, sugar transporters, and proangiogenic and inflammatory factors (8,13,18,25). Moreover, HIF1␣ has also been shown to modulate inflammation indirectly by influencing the NF-B ...