Food allergies affect an estimate 220 million people All over the world, reports the World Health Organization. In the United States only, one in 13 children lives with potentially fatal food allergies, according to research and education for non-profit organization (Price). An important step in this area was taken in 2024 when the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the first biological to treat food allergies after accidental exhibitions, Xolair (Omalizumab). Although there are a handful of other food allergy treatments in the development pipeline, IThe combinations of monoclonal antibody combinations and immune -wheelbase drugs, innovation in this area remains limited.
Replacement of dated and harmful methods
A limitation retaining the development of new therapies for food allergies is that many commonly used research tools are obsolete and often not very practical. Research has been hampered by several factors, including the binding process for the introduction of potential allergens to determine a response. When experimental treatments reach clinical trials, the most commonly used method to test efficiency in patients is the oral food challenge (OFC), which implies exposing patients to progressive quantities of food to determine if they have reactions.
This method is often not conclusive, or worse, it can cause anaphylaxis in certain participants. The simple stress of risking potential reactions during an oral food challenge, associated with the need to go to a medical establishment for tests, would probably discourage many people from participating in a research test. It is also unlikely that parents intentionally accept their children to potential food allergens. A study found that 23% of children undergoing an oral food challenge have experienced multiple systemic reactions, and 15% of these cases require spinephrine.
Meanwhile, one of the most promising methods to advance in vitro food allergy tests is the activation test of basophiliacs (BAT), which uses flow cytometry to measure the activation of basophils, a type of white blood cells, in blood samples exposed to allergens. The challenge here is that the BAT tests are complex workflows and in several stages which require expertise and which are based on fresh blood samples which can be difficult to collect, store and transport.
A recent study has shown how new technologies could solve these problems for researchers investigating new treatments for food allergies. A team led by the Icahn medical school in
Mount Sinai in New York has demonstrated how workflows beats that combine ready -to -use reagents with automation and artificial intelligence can rationalize tests. This emerging technology could make researchers from around the world to study food allergy that they could not before, because they did not have the appropriate equipment or expertise. In the future, the same technology could considerably simplify the diagnosis of food allergies in people.
Rationalization of flow cytometry work flows
Bat allows researchers to capture many unique characteristics for individual patients from blood samples, including specific anaphylactic routes in cells that are activated in response to certain foods. However, to effectively question the function of these cellular routes, laboratories need expertise in flow cytometry and a constant supply of fresh blood samples. The typical workflow of research on food allergy involves at least 10 manual pipetage stages and one or two centrifugation stages. Logistically, this is simply not possible for many laboratories.
For the recent studyIn the United States, researchers from 15 clinical sites have collected a total of 241 children’s blood samples aged 1 to 3. Instead of having to precipitate the samples in bat tests, the researchers of the collection sites mixed the blood with dry reagents which were sent to them in tubes ready to use. To allow the measurements to be measured to allergens and drugs used to treat allergic diseases, some of the tubes also contained increasing quantities of dried peanut extract or other reagents allowing the realization of negative and positive witnesses. Despite different compositions, all tubes could be treated after the same approach, considerably simplifying experimental protocols.
The new process used for this study has been designed for ease, efficiency and precision. Because the reagents were dry and pre-pre-bullets, clinical collection sites could operate with them at room temperature and send them back to a centralized treatment site without having to worry about preserving their freshness. The pipetage process at 10 steps and more which would generally be necessary has been reduced to four steps, without the need for centrifugation. Less manual steps translate into fewer errors, while reducing the risk that variability in manual manipulation can negatively affect the results.
The researchers compared the data they have collected from the rationalized workflow beats to a study of food challenge controlled by placebo in double blind people involving exposure to peanuts. They indicated that BAT data predicted precisely the results of the food challenge.
Future opportunities
The rationalization of bat tests could open new research paths to new approaches to treat food allergies. In this study, the 241 patient samples were divided into two groups – one of which was used to form an automatic learning algorithm and the other to test it. A similar process could be used to improve the methods by which food allergies are characterized.
Most food allergies specialists agree that no single biomarker is enough to fully elucidate how allergens approach dangerous reactions in people. Instead, there are probably many different biomarkers at stake – and artificial intelligence could be used to derive information on biomarkers who could then be used to define new targets for treatments. The beauty of AI is that it simplifies the task of taking biomarkers that have been identified and studied in a wide range of clinical trials and by deriving ideas that could quickly lead to new treatment ideas.
A wider use of bat tests could also contribute to the replacement of OFC in clinical trials of new therapies. OFC tests can be logistical hassles, especially when patients are children. Exposing children to food known to be problematic raises ethical concerns, and it can be difficult to determine how a child feels after exposure and treatment anyway. A rationalized bat process could offer the possibility of measuring all this with simple blood tests instead.
There is also a sustainability advantage. During the study led by Mount Sinai, it was not necessary to store blood samples in the refrigerators or to use dry ice to ship them to the central laboratory which treated them, thanks to the dry reagents, which were formulated to remain stable at room temperature. Without the need for cold storage, it is easy to imagine how research on food allergy could be considerably extended to include small remote clinical research centers, as well as sites that can have limited cold storage capacity.
In the future, it may be possible to apply new bat techniques for clinical use, by attenuating the process of identifying and diagnosing food allergic.
As flow cytometry technology continues to improve, our ability to discover new ideas and therapeutic targets in food allergies – and put in the market innovations that will improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients around the world.
Photo: Flickr User Blakes
Jean-Marc Busnel, PHDis principal and principal researcher to Beckman Coulter Life Sciences. He is a member of the global research team and is co-author of more than 50 articles evaluated by peers in the fields of organic chemistry, metabolomics, proteomics and functional cytometry tests based on total blood. He is currently heading a team dedicated to translational research, which recently won the first stage of the Fare Innovation Award Diagnostic Challenge. Together, the team works to take advantage of the flow cytometry capacities for the stratification of patients in various pathological fields such as allergy, autoimmunity, infectious diseases and oncology. To this end, special attention is paid to cytometry tests in functional flows based on total blood and the simplicity of workflows so that the real flower potential in flows can be carried out by a required democratization of technology.
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