'Turning off' allergies
A team from The University of Queensland (UQ) is one step closer to a treatment that could ‘turn off’ the immune response that causes common allergies, including asthma — which affects over two million Australians.
Funded by the Asthma Foundation and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the research team is led by Associate Professor Ray Steptoe at the UQ Diamantina Institute, who is hopeful that this research could lead to a single treatment giving life-long protection from severe allergies.
“When someone has an allergy or asthma flare-up, the symptoms they experience results from immune cells reacting to protein in the allergen,” Dr Steptoe said. “The challenge in asthma and allergies is that these immune cells, known as T-cells, develop a form of immune ‘memory’ and become very resistant to treatments.”
Dr Peter Anderson, CEO of the Asthma Foundations of Queensland and NSW, said more than half of asthma patients struggle to manage their affliction: “Even though there are effective treatments available for the vast majority, patients face a number of obstacles and challenges in their self-management practices.”
Dr Steptoe’s team has had success in wiping the memory of animal T-cells with gene therapy. The next step is to replicate these results using human cells, de-sensitising our immune response to allergy-causing proteins.
“We take blood stem cells, insert a gene which regulates the allergen protein and we put that into the recipient,” Dr Steptoe said. “Our work used an experimental asthma allergen, but this research could be applied to treat those who have severe allergies to peanuts, bee venom, shellfish and the like.”
Dr Steptoe is confident that his team’s research can lead to the ultimate goal of a single injected gene therapy, stating, “We haven’t quite got it to the point where it’s as simple as getting a flu jab so we are working on making it simpler and safer so it could be used across a wide cross-section of affected individuals. At the moment, the target population might be those individuals who have severe asthma or potentially lethal food allergies.”
Dr Anderson said: “The foundation welcomes the findings of this research and looks forward to a day in the future when a safe one-off treatment may be available that has the potential to eliminate any experience of asthma in vulnerable patients.”
The study has been published in JCI Insight.
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