www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

The peanut's deadly power may soon be blunted as research moves out of the
lab and into people-testing stages, May 2006 by Elvira Cordileone.

"Peanut allergy deserves particular attention because it almost always
presents early in life, is often severe, generally persists indefinitely,
and is the most common cause of fatal food-related anaphylaxis," writes
Rhonda Kagan, a physician and researcher with the McGill University Health
Centre, in an article published in the February 2003 edition of
Environmental Health Perspectives.

Her study of Montreal school-aged children concluded that 1.5 per cent had a
peanut allergy ? higher than anticipated.

Food allergies of all types affect 6 to 8 per cent of Canadian children and
3 to 4 per cent of adults, says Susan Waserman, a professor of immunology at
McMaster University and president of the Canadian Society of Allergy and
Clinical Immunology.

What makes the peanut such a potent allergen remains uncertain, but Waserman
says deep roasting may increase its allergen power.

For years, scientists have been chipping away at the peanut problem on
several fronts: reducing its effect by making the immune system more
tolerant (this works like allergy shots, desensitizing by exposing the body
to ever-increasing doses of the allergen), preventing allergic reactions
through immunization; tinkering with the peanut's genetic structure to shut
down proteins that trigger reactions.

But as clinical trials on people get underway, researchers face a new
challenge: they have to find ways to test their potential remedies on people
with allergies so severe that the slightest exposure to peanuts could
trigger a serious reaction.

San Francisco-based Genentech postponed a 150-patient trial of a drug called
Xolair in January after an attempt to assess test subjects' sensitivity
levels caused some severe reactions.

The drug, already approved for use on asthma, would work to prevent allergic
reactions.

Genentech spokesperson Tara Cooper said the company would be going ahead
with trials once it finds a safer-to-measure sensitivity.

Robert Wood, a physician with the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine in Baltimore, hopes to begin tests in 2007 using injections of
peanut allergen, similar to hay fever shots, to lessen sensitivity and
reduce the risk of anaphylaxis.

The tests, which were to start this year, were delayed to better ensure the
allergen is pure.

Wood says the treatment eliminated the allergy in mice after eight weeks of
therapy.

Despite such hurdles, leading researchers say effective therapies could be
available in five to 10 years.

In the spring edition of the Canadian magazine Allergic Living, Xiu-Min Li,
an associate professor of pediatrics, allergy and immunology at New York's
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, reports success in the laboratory with a
Chinese herbal compound called FAHF-2. The herbs blocked anaphylaxis for six
months in peanut-sensitized mice. She hopes to start human trials later this
year.

Dale Umetsu, of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston,
helped develop an experimental vaccine that reduced or eliminated allergic
reactions to peanuts, milk and wheat in dogs.

"We're not close to a cure, but there's a lot of hope," Umetsu says.

Meanwhile, Hortense Dodo, a professor of food biotechnology at Alabama A&M
University, created a hypoallergenic peanut. After five years of genetic
tinkering, her team announced last year they had produced specimens stripped
of a protein called Ara h2, to which 90 per cent of allergic people react.
They've since shut down two more proteins.

The transgenic peanut, which the team grows in the lab's greenhouse, won't
be on the market until it's thoroughly tested, a process likely to take
about five years.

"Our goal is not to force people who are allergic to peanuts to eat the
transgenic peanut," Dodo explains. "Our goal is to encourage farmers and the
food establishment to use it."

The re-engineered product, she says, would cut the risk of accidental
exposure to allergens most people react to ? and the number of anaphylactic
reactions and death.

[www.checkbiotech.org]

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