2016/05/16

Novel vaccines targeting dendritic cells by coupling allergoids to nonoxidized mannan enhance allergen uptake and induce functional regulatory T cells through programmed death ligand

Allergy may be combated by using Allergen immunotherapy (AIT). However, AIT displays a variety of shortcomings, related to security, efficacy, duration, and patient compliance.
In this context, using a multidisciplinary approach combining synthetic chemistry, structural studies, and a variety of assays, including IgE-blocking experiments, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, co-cultures, suppression assays, real-time quantitative PCR, ELISAs, and ELISpot, a team of scientists from University Complutense, Hospital Clínico, CIB-CSIC (Madrid), Immunotek (Alcalá de Henares), University of Florida (Tampa), and CIC bioGUNE have demonstrated that allergoids conjugated to nonoxidized mannan may represent suitable vaccines for AIT. These findings might also be of general application for developing therapeutic interventions in other immune tolerance–related diseases.

For more information, see:
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(16)30082-3/abstract