Science focuses on causal treatment of allergy, research also to yield anti-allergy vaccines for food allergies

The use of immunotherapy based on anti-allergy vaccines is set to increase for the treatment of allergies in the years to come. Far from fighting the symptoms, this therapy tackles the cause. Research is also being conducted into food allergies to establish whether immunotherapy offers a solution for patients who react severely to the accidental consumption of foods such as peanuts.

All this was revealed at the scientific seminar held by HAL Allergy on 15 May to mark its fiftieth anniversary and the opening of its new head office at the Bio Science Park in Leiden.

During the seminar scientists from home and abroad presented the latest state of play in research and the history of immunotherapy. That history began just over a century ago, when scientists discovered that administering small quantities of substances that people were allergic to put the disrupted immune system back on track and diminished the severity of the reactions. "History has shown that it works", confirms Professor J. Ring of Munich University of Technology.

Dr F. Spieksma, biologist in the team that identified the house mite as a source of allergy fifty years ago, described the long search for this tiny creature, the disintegrating droppings of which penetrate deep into the lung tissue.

Together with scientists in New York, researchers at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht (UMC) are looking into how the peanut substances that cause the most severe reactions can be identified. The aim is to make it possible to treat the world's most deadly food allergy with vaccines.

At the same time the FAST (Food Allergy Specific Immunotherapy) project has got underway in the EU for the development of immunotherapy to treat allergies to fish and fruit in particular with recombinant allergens. Immunobiologist Dr R. van Ree of the Academic Medical Centre Amsterdam (AMC) highlighted the great importance of improving the ability of vaccine producers such as HAL Allergy to measure the effects of treatments by standardising their extracts. HAL Allergy has been providing his department with research support for fifteen years, and - much to the AMC's delight - is now also joining the FAST project.

Dr E. Knol of the UMC outlined the painstaking development of a vaccine for peanut allergy, number one in the top 5 food allergies. In America alone, 1.7 million people suffer from this allergy, and 100 to 150 people die after eating peanuts. His team is setting out to precisely identity the locations in the allergens that trigger the immune system. That will make it possible to improve diagnostics and to develop ideas for immunotherapy. They are also investigating which physical aspects of the patients themselves play a role in severe allergic reactions such as these.
Research in these two areas could lead to an immunotherapy-based treatment in the future, says Dr Knol. Olympic skating champion Bart Veldkamp told the seminar how he suffers from all the allergies that people can suffer from - from hay fever to food allergy - and is able to compete at top international levels despite that. "But it would have been better if I'd known about these vaccines when I was fifteen. I'm convinced that this is the solution", concluded Veldkamp.

For more information: www.hal-allergy.com