Recombinant Allergens in Immunotherapy of Asthma

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder caused by T-cell-mediated inflammation within airways. The prevalence of allergic diseases is rapidly increasing so that knowing allergens (characterization and types) and strategies for asthma management, prevention and treatment are very important. The most strategy is the production of recombinant allergens. Many of the problems associated with using natural allergenic products for allergy diagnosis and treatment can be overcome with the use of genetically engineered recombinant allergens. Various recombinant allergens are now emerging as strong candidates for allergen-specific immunotherapy. Extrinsic asthma (a type of asthma) may respond to immunotherapy such as using recombinant allergens. These exciting novel therapies provide not only the promise of new therapies for asthma but also valuable tools for the investigation of asthma mechanisms. This review describes strategies for asthma management, prevention and treatment, and especially recombinant allergens and also recent progresses in the molecular biology of recombinant allergens and then advantage and disadvantage of these allergens are explained. There are many methods for producing allergens such as extraction of serum, Ro/SS-A anti-Ro/SS-A system, Using the Solid-Phase Immunoadsorption system and finally recombinant technology for producing recombinant allergens. Recombinant allergens can express in many systems such as bacteria, yeast, insect cells, animal cells, and transgenic plant. We describe recombinant allergens produced in these systems. The obtained results hold promise that recombinant allergen–based immunotherapy will improve current immunotherapy practice and may open possibilities for new treatment strategies and possibly even for prophylactic vaccination.