(Press-News.org) Why do people develop antibodies to food? While clinicians have long observed that healthy humans develop a particular type of antibody, called IgG, to the foods they eat, the reasons for this phenomenon have remained unknown. Researchers, led by investigators from Allergy and Immunology at Mass General Brigham, have identified the mechanism underlying IgG antibody development to food proteins. They discovered that humans are intrinsically predisposed to develop a particular type of IgG antibody to peanut by human antibody genes. These antibodies develop, whether or not they develop peanut allergy. Results are published in Science Translational Medicine.
“Our research not only explains why we have always found these antibodies against peanut, but why so many people, including young children, have such similar antibodies to a food so common in the world,” said senior author Sarita Patil, MD, co-director of the Food Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of Mass General Brigham. Patil is also an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We were astonished to find highly similar antibodies. Statistically this seems improbable, since our immune system can produce as many as a quintillion different kinds of antibodies. When we found these nearly identical, public antibodies in multiple patients, we were fascinated.”
The research team, including lead author Orlee Marini-Rapoport, who conducted the work at MGH, found that humans are poised to develop antibodies to peanut in highly predictable ways through multiple pathways. In fact, these antibodies can bind to peanut before they undergo further evolution. Despite the different alleles, or variations in the human genome that exist in antibody genes, most humans have gene alleles that can contribute to making these antibodies. The research team then looked for these specific antibodies by designing a new assay using blood. In peanut-allergic patients, all of them had these antibodies. The team then set out to discover whether these common, easy-to-produce antibodies might also develop at the earliest time after infants begin to eat peanut. Indeed, most young children from ages 1-3 who make IgG antibodies to these peanut proteins make these specific antibodies.
While this work begins to explain why nonallergic individuals develop antibodies to food proteins, it also has important implications to the field of allergy. The fact that individuals develop highly similar antibodies suggests that it is also possible to therapeutically target food allergy across patients.
“As we know, antibodies can be protective, but they can also cause disease in the context of allergy,” said Patil. “If on a larger level, we can dissect how humans develop antibodies, and why some go on to become allergic, we may be able to intervene with targeted therapies to treat and prevent food allergies on a population level.”
Authorship: In addition to Patil and Marini-Rapoport, Mass General Brigham authors include Lena Andrieux, Tarun Keswani, Timothy Sun, Victoria M. Martin, Qian Yuan, and Wayne G. Shreffler. Additional authors include Guangning Zong, Dylan Duchen, Gur Yaari, Jungki Min, Isabelle R. Lytle, Alexander F. Rosenberg, Christopher Fucile, James J. Kobie, Michael S. Piepenbrink, Antti E. Seppo, Kirsi M. Jarvinen, Johannes R. Loeffler, Andrew B. Ward, Steven H. Kleinstein, Lars C. Pedersen, Monica L. Fernandez-Quintero, and Geoffrey A. Mueller.
Disclosures: Patil has consultancy agreements with Mabylon, Bulhmann, and Seismic Therapeutics and is a site PI for a clinical trial for Regeneron. Min, Pedersen, Mueller, and Patil filed U.S. Provisional Patent 63/486,570 containing the epitope 1.1 mutant rAra h 2 allergen. Jarvinen has consultancy agreements with Janssen R&D, Harmony/Milk Care co and is a site PI for a clinical trial for Aimmune and Siolta. Duchen has a consultancy agreement with Artizan Biosciences. Kleinstein has a consultancy agreement with Peraton. Martin is a paid consultant who serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for Milk Care Co.
Funding: Funding for this work was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R01AI155630, R01AI182001, U01 131344, R01AI104739), Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (1ZIAES102906, 1ZICES102645), Food Allergy Science Initiative, Gerber Foundation, Demarest Lloyd Jr. Foundation Thornhill Family Fund, NIAID (K23AI151556), and a Yale-Boehringer Ingelheim Biomedical Data Science Fellowship.
Paper cited: Marini-Rapoport, O et al. “Germline-encoded recognition of peanut underlies development of convergent antibodies in humans” Science Translational Medicine DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adw4148
For More Information:
MGH Food Allergy Center
For Some Trick or Treaters, Food Allergies are a True Fear Factor. Here’s How Research at Mass General Brigham Could Help
Researchers Identify Mechanism Underlying Allergic Itching, and Show It Can Be Blocked
###
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
END
A new large-scale study has mapped the first molecular events that drive the formation of harmful amyloid protein aggregates found in Alzheimer’s disease, pointing towards a new potential therapeutic target.
Published today (11 June) in Science Advances, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Centre of Genomic Regulation (CRG) and Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia1 (IBEC) used large-scale genomics and machine learning to study over 140,000 versions of a peptide called Aβ42, which forms harmful plaques in the brain and is known to play a central role in Alzheimer’s disease.
This research is a significant step towards helping scientists find new ...
The Minister for AI and Digital Government launched the UK’s first of its kind AI for Science Master’s programme at King’s College London.
Feryal Clark MP joined leading King’s interdisciplinary scientists at the Quad to announce the new programme, which will draw expertise from across disciplines, including biosciences, humanities, social sciences, mathematics, security and law – preparing AI experts of the future in an ever-changing world.
The Master’s is part of King’s major £45.5 million investment into science – helping to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing us all. The investment is advancing knowledge, ...
In a new study, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have used a cloud of atoms chilled down to incredibly cold temperatures to simultaneously measure acceleration in three dimensions—a feat that many scientists didn’t think was possible.
The device, a new type of atom “interferometer,” could one day help people navigate submarines, spacecraft, cars and other vehicles more precisely.
“Traditional atom interferometers can only measure acceleration in a single ...
Under what conditions would it be right — or is it never acceptable — to eliminate a harmful species from our planet? That’s what an international team of researchers, including Professor of Philosophy Dr. Clare Palmer from Texas A&M University, explores in a study published in Science.
In the study, “Deliberate extinction by genome modification: An ethical challenge,” researchers examine the controversial idea of using genetic engineering for local and full species extinction as a conservation strategy. They conducted ...
Two recent studies suggest there is no significant benefit of early biologics over standard step-up care with methotrexate2,3, but these did not select for poor prognosis. The aim therefore of the SPEED trial (Severe Psoriatic arthritis – Early intervEntion to control Disease) – which was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) – was to compare disease activity in 192 PsA patients with poor prognostic factors when treated with one of three regimens: standard step-up with conventional systemic disease-modifying ...
By Beth Miller
Excessive nutrients in wastewater can lead to detrimental discharges into natural water bodies, prompting harmful algal blooms with severe environmental and economic repercussions. To address this pressing issue, a team of engineers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has developed an innovative solution. Their novel composite nanotechnology removes and recovers nutrients from wastewater, subsequently upcycling them as agricultural fertilizers or as biorefinery feedstocks, ...
LONDON, ON – A groundbreaking clinical trial led by London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute (LHSCRI) and Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry may enhance how medical professionals detect hidden blood clots responsible for strokes. The study, published in The Lancet Neurology, is the first to show that extending imaging to include the heart within minutes of a patient’s arrival to hospital with an acute stroke significantly improves the ability to determine the stroke’s underlying cause. This innovative diagnostic approach can be used to determine an effective and tailored treatment plan for preventing future strokes.
Strokes ...
Ateneo de Manila University researchers warn that young Filipinos graduating with a degree in nursing or medicine face an uphill battle for stable employment, fair pay, and meaningful roles in the local public health system.
This comes as the Philippines faces a massive shortage of health professionals, with less than eight doctors per 10,000 people—below the international standard of 10 per 10,000—and over 127,000 vacancies for nurses, particularly in rural areas and private facilities.
The researchers found that many new graduates feel lost and unsupported ...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The response to a 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, reveals how the modern environmental movement has been used to protect the interests of private homeowners, said a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researcher.
Landscape architecture professor Pollyanna Rhee chronicled how affluent homeowners use what she calls “ownership environmentalism” to focus on protection of property and community norms, rather than society as a whole, in her new book “Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970.”
Rhee said she was interested in examining how ...
Researchers released a peer-reviewed analysis in the academic journal Climate Policy today arguing that the urgent work of removing excess carbon from the atmosphere — known as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) — can’t just rely on complex, untested techniques to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) and inject it deep underground or pump it into the ocean. Rather, they show that nature-based solutions, which include restoring forests and other ecosystems that capture atmospheric CO2 using the ancient biochemical process ...
