The work of University of Guelph food scientist Yoshinori Mine is fuelled not only by his love of science, but by the love of his daughter.
After watching his little girl try to cope with allergies to eggs, milk and other foods, Mine felt compelled to find a solution. He may have gotten a little closer, with breakthrough research he recently had published in the journal, Clinical and Experimental Allergy.
Mine has found what could be a safe way to help children develop tolerances to foods that can bring on allergic reactions such as hives, vomiting and life-threatening anaphylactic shock.
Mine told CTV.ca that the current options for children with severe food allergies are few.
"The main approach is to eliminate these allergens from the diet. But the fact is, it's almost impossible to eliminate these food allergens from our diets, because they're in so many processed foods," he said. "And also, eggs and milk are very important nutrients for children."
There are therapies available to help those children with other forms of allergies that involve "allergy shots": injections of tiny amounts of the allergen. The therapy uses gradually larger doses of an allergen, until the child's immune system learns to tolerate the allergen.
But the method can't be used for food allergies, in part because food allergies can be so dangerous and can lead to anaphylactic shock, a severe reaction in which the blood pressure drops and the throat closes up, cutting off breathing.
Still, Mine thinks the idea of helping a child build tolerance to an allergen through immunotherapy is a good one, and is developing a method to translate the concept to food allergies.
Since it's known that it's the protein in an allergenic food that sets off the reaction, he's decided to try a new approach using only the peptides in the proteins, which are the substances that act as bonds between amino acids.
"Our idea is to use only the necessary key elements of the allergens. We extract only the important peptides and we inject this into allergic kids to help their bodies to develop tolerance in a safer way," he explained.
While he hasn't tested the idea in children yet, he has tried in mice -- and has been delighted with the results.
Mine's research team fed a group of mice with egg allergies multiple peptides from the egg protein that causes allergic reactions (called hen ovalbumin). They continued the immunotherapy for six weeks, and then had the mice ingest the whole protein.
His team monitored the mice for visible signs of an allergic reaction, while also taking blood and tissue samples to test for substances produced during allergic reactions: histamine and immunoglobulin E.
They found that 80 per cent of the allergic mice didn't respond at all to the egg protein. And the rest experienced only a mild allergic reaction.
"We were quite successful using our egg allergy mouse model," Mine reports. "It's not just safe, but we could develop this tolerance in a very short term; in this case we were successful in six weeks."
Mine says the hope now is to test the concept on human subjects. Other teams in Europe are planning other tests with peanut allergens and milk allergens.
While immunotherapy isn't new, research in peptide-based immunotherapy is just beginning, and so far, it seems a good alternative to current methods.
"The traditional approach exposes the kids to the allergen. But our approach activates only one pathway that is important to suppress allergic response. So the mechanism is different, actually," Mine explained.
"It's not just the difference between ingesting the protein or the peptide; we are trying to activate the suppressor T-cell, which is very important to control allergic response."
The hope, Mine says, is to develop a therapy product that can help the six to eight per cent of North American children who have food allergies. He says only about 50 per cent of thes children will outgrow their allergies by the time they are five.
"No one has been able to explain why some children don't outgrow the allergic response," he said.
As for Mine's daughter, she's now 19, and still can't eat eggs, or peanuts, though her reactions are not as severe as they once were.
"It's getting a little better. But another problem is she is also developing allergies to dogs and pollen and house dust," says Mine.
As a parent of a child with severe allergies, Mine is hoping that one day he can spare other parents of the worry and stress he's known.
