Novel peanut-specific human IgE monoclonal antibodies may uncover new therapeutic targets for peanut allergy Allergy Antibodies PeanutAllergy UNC VanderbiltU frontiersin
By Dr. Priyom Bose, Ph.D.Oct 2 2022Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc. It is estimated that around 10% of the US population has peanut allergies, a medical emergency that can be treated but not cured. Compared to those without allergies, these individuals are at a greater risk of anaphylaxis. Hence, there is a need to develop novel therapies to treat peanut and other food allergies.
Preformed mediators, such as vasoactive amines, the cytokine tumor necrosis factor -alpha, and proteases, are stored in MC cytoplasmic granules. Interestingly, MCs also synthesize additional cytokines and de novo lipid mediators to maintain the allergic symptoms. Hence, new food allergy treatments could be designed by targeting MC activity during the allergy effector phase.
Several in vitro models of the allergy effector phase have been developed based on purified human IgE antibodies. These models revealed that anti-human IgE antibodies always crosslinked IgE-FcεRI complexes on the MC and induced degranulation. However, this was not the case with MCs sensitized to human sera containing anti-food allergen IgE. In this case, degranulation did not always occur in the presence of specific food allergens.
Two novel human peanut-specific IgE mAbs were generated using human hybridoma techniques, which were used to sensitize rat basophilic leukemia SX-38 cells expressing the human IgE receptor . These peanut-specific human IgE mAbs could be crosslinked directly with clinically relevant food allergen peanut, which reproducibly elicits allergic effector cell activation and degranulation.