Atopic allergies are an increasing health problem, affecting up to 30% of people living in cities, which, if untreated, could progress to asthmatic conditions. Immunotherapy is the only way to manage the root causes of these afflictions and alter the natural course of the disease; however, both diagnosis and treatment depend on the accessibility to specific, highly purified allergens.
The usual way to obtain them is to extract them from their sources, which may yield a poor mixture of many allergens and toxins. The modern alternative is to genetically transform bacteria, typically E. coli, to produce multiple recombinant antigens. However, a significant drawback of this protocol is that bacteria don't construct proteins exactly like we do, which means that their interpretation of an external gene may not elicit the same response in the human body as the original natural transcript. Purification of allergens produced in this manner may also fail to exclude natural bacterial toxins, which can interfere with the accuracy of the diagnostic results.
Joel Katan visited the Instituto de Química da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, where he learned to transform Pichia pastoris, a yeast, whose eukaryotic nature makes the production of recombinant allergens safer, more abundant, and more precise for the diagnosis and treatment of allergies in humans, under the supervision of Drs. Rodrigo Volcan and Gabriela Breda
Joel's work is based at the UNSAM's Instituto de Tecnologías Emergentes y Ciencias Aplicadas, at Dr. Alejandra Goldman's laboratory. We are thankful for this initiative to tackle a significant health issue that disproportionately affects urban populations.
