Baruch College Professor Baofu Qiao at the Forefront of a Breakthrough Allergy Treatment

Baruch College Professor Baofu Qiao at the Forefront of a Breakthrough Allergy Treatment

Pilot study demonstrates 100% success rate in preventing allergic reactions in mice

January 16, 2024

Baruch College Assistant Professor of Chemistry Baofu Qiao has helped develop a new approach which successfully prevented anaphylaxis without causing side effects in a pilot mouse study.

• Besides avoiding allergens, no methods currently exist to prevent allergic reactions.
• Nanotherapy selectively targets immune cells responsible for allergic responses.
• A nanoparticle is coated with antibodies that engage with and then deactivate specific cells responsible for responding to a specific allergen.
• In a pilot study, therapy prevented anaphylaxis in all mice exposed to an allergen.

Professor Baofu Qiao, together with a team of researchers at Northwestern University (IL), has developed the first selective therapy to prevent allergic reactions - common immune system responses that can range in severity from itchy hives and watery eyes to trouble breathing and even death.

To develop the new therapy, the team coated nanoparticles with antibodies capable of shutting down specific immune cells (called mast cells) responsible for allergic responses. The nanoparticle also carries an allergen that corresponds to the patient's specific allergy. If a person is allergic to peanuts, for example, then the nanoparticle carries a peanut protein.

"Surprisingly, we found that the surface of the nanoparticles is adaptive. It adjusts its polar and nonpolar domains based on the antibody neighbors," said Qiao, who supervised the atomistic simulation. The soft surface of the nanoparticles enables the antibodies to preserve their function while targeting proteins.

In this two-step approach, the allergen engages the specific mast cells responsible for the allergy, and then the antibodies shut down only those cells. This highly targeted approach enables the therapy to selectively prevent specific allergies without simultaneously suppressing the entire immune system.

In the mouse study, the therapy demonstrated an astonishing 100% success in preventing allergic responses without causing noticeable side effects.

The research was published on Tuesday, January 16, 2024 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. It marks the first successful nanotherapy for inhibiting mast cells, thus preventing an allergic response to a specific allergen.

"Currently, there are no methods available to specifically target mast cells," said Northwestern's Evan A. Scott, who led the study. "All we have are medications like antihistamines to treat symptoms, and those don't prevent allergies. They counteract effects of histamines after the mast cells already have been activated. If we had a way to inactivate the mast cells that respond to specific allergens, then we could stop dangerous immune responses in severe situations like anaphylaxis as well as less serious responses like seasonal allergies."

"The biggest unmet need is in anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening," said Northwestern's Dr. Bruce Bochner, an allergy expert and study co-author. "Certain forms of oral immunotherapy might be helpful in some cases, but we currently don't have any FDA-approved treatment options that consistently prevent such reactions other than avoiding the offending food or agent. Otherwise, treatments like epinephrine are given to treat severe reactions - not prevent them. Wouldn't it be great if there was a safe and effective treatment for food allergy that consistently made it possible to reintroduce a food into the diet that you used to have to strictly avoid?"

The implications of the study are vast. Armed with these promising results, the researchers now plan to explore their nanotherapy for treating other mast cell-related diseases, including mastocytosis, a rare form of mast cell cancer. They also are investigating approaches to loading drugs inside the nanoparticles to selectively kill mast cells in mastocytosis without injuring other cell types.

The study, "Controlled adsorption of multiple bioactive proteins enables targeted mast cell nanotherapy," was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (grant number 1R01EB030629-01A1) that Dr. Baofu Qiao received a sub-award and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (grant number R21AI159586).

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