Mechanisms of asthma and allergic inflammationRecombinant allergens for immunotherapy
Section snippets
Critical steps in the development of recombinant allergen–based vaccines
Important questions that need to be addressed for the rational design of recombinant allergen–based vaccines are displayed in Fig 1. These issues are exemplified for 2 allergen sources, birch pollen and grass pollen, for which recombinant allergen–based vaccines have been developed and have entered clinical trials. The first important step is the selection of the predominant allergen sources. Selection criteria may include the frequency of sensitization, the clinical relevance, the magnitude of
Current status of recombinant allergen–based immunotherapy
The selection of the relevant recombinant allergen molecules is the prerequisite for rationale vaccine development. Two types of recombinant allergen–based vaccines have been developed and tested in clinical trials. The first type is based on the use of recombinant allergens that equal the natural allergens (ie, recombinant wild-type–based vaccines), and the second type is based on genetically engineered/modified recombinant allergens that exhibit reduced allergenic activity (Table II).
In fact,
Future perspectives
Encouraging results have been obtained with recombinant allergen–based vaccines in the first proof of principle studies conducted for birch and grass pollen allergy. It is therefore likely that recombinant allergen–based therapeutic vaccines can be developed according to the same principles—that is, use of recombinant wild-type allergens and hypoallergenic derivatives for the most common allergen sources. Future work will have to focus on the identification of the relevant allergens in these
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Supported by grants F1815, F1818 and L214-B13 from the Austrian Science Fund and by the Christian Doppler Research Association, Austria.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: The authors have declared that they have no conflict of interest.