Australia – S Korea - Fighting Food Allergies Through A Korean-Australian Collaboration

Food scientists in Australia and Korea are working together to develop innovative processing techniques that alter the properties of allergenic proteins in milk and food products.

Food scientists in Australia and South Korea are minimizing the adverse health effects of allergens in milk and other food products by developing innovative processing techniques that alter the properties of allergenic proteins.

A new memorandum of understanding signed today between the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Chemical Engineering and Korea’s National Institute of Animal Science (NIAS) will explore the potential benefits of this and other innovative food safety technologies.

The food allergy research group at UNSW, led by Dr. Alice Lee, aims to develop nano-sensors that can better detect allergens such as those found in animal milk, which can cross a spectrum and in severe cases can result in potentially life threatening anaphylaxis.

They are also working to understand how these allergens change after harvest and during food processing, and how this affects the resulting human reaction.

“Food allergy has been an emerging food safety concern especially in developed countries,” said Lee. “The current collaborative research project we have with the National Institute of Animal Science is focused on reducing the health risks of milk allergens by a means of high pressure processing.”

Under the new agreement, a researcher from the NIAS has been seconded to UNSW to work in the Food Science and Technology group, which is also looking at microbiological risks such as E. coli and salmonella, and chemical risks posed by traces of antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides.

Antibiotics are often administered to livestock in very low doses to fend off bacteria growth, but leftover residues can sometimes be present in meat, says Lee, resulting in negative health impacts when humans are exposed.

Korea’s Rural Development Administration Department is comparable to Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, says Lee, so it has a broad research focus, with a range of possibilities for future research collaborations in the areas of food safety.

“Korea and Australia share a common interest in food security, global food availability, and food safety – especially around livestock hygiene,” said Professor Rob Burford, head of the School of Chemical Engineering. “This is an exciting partnership for UNSW.”

Source: UNSW.

Asian Scientist Newsroom | Academia

Switzerland - Allergy-detecting device pinpoints disorder in just 20 minutes

Abionic, an EPFL spin-off, has just brought its first round of financing to a close and was selected yesterday by Red Herring as one of Europe’s 100 most innovative companies. Using only a single drop of blood, the system developed by the company can pinpoint allergies in just 20 minutes. The device could be available by 2013.

With its quick and painless allergy detection and analysis system, Abionic is on a roll. This spin-off of EPFL’s Biomedical Imaging Laboratory has just obtained two million Swiss francs from private and institutional investors, including MedHoldings, Polytech Ventures, Blue Ocean Ventures, Fongit Seed Invest and the Business Angels Switzerland. This funding will allow the company to finish developing its system and aim for commercialization next year. Yesterday, the young company selected as one of Europe’s 100 most innovative companies in late April by Red Herring, a US magazine that is considered a reference for many venture capitalists. Four other EPFL startups were also on the top 100 list: Biocartis, Paper.li, HR Matching, and StereoTools.

A multitude of allergens on a single CD

Geared for use by allergists, pediatricians and other medical practitioners, this device resembles a DVD player equipped with a touch screen. It comes equipped with plastic capsules containing single-use biochips. It only takes about 20 minutes to diagnose a patient’s primary allergies, using a single drop of blood. This system could free millions of people throughout the world from having to undergo the tedious skin test, which consists of scratching or pricking the skin to allow exposure to various allergens, and then evaluating the skin's reaction.

A few drops of a reagent are mixed with the blood sample. The preparation is placed in a compartmentalized capsule that contains ten biochips, each of which is prepared with a different allergen. The tiny device is mounted on a plastic surface in the form of a CD and “read” by a laser. The results appear on the screen and are automatically saved to a memory card. The doctor can read, print and save the results to his or her computer. The CD can be personalized with several dozens of different allergens.

Counting molecules

In a general sense, nanofluidic biochips take advantage of various special properties that fluids exhibit at the nanometer scale. Nicolas Durand built upon this technology as part of his PhD research in EPFL’s Microsystems Laboratory, and it was further developed by the Biomedical Imaging Laboratory start-up.

Here’s how it works: The blood enters into contact with allergens that have been previously deposited in the biochip. The interactions between certain proteins in the blood, which are marked with a fluorochrome (a chemical substance that can emit light upon excitation) and the immobilized allergens are measured by fluorescence. The device’s laser excites the protein-allergen molecular complexes, and they emit light. The concentration of these complexes determines the degree of the allergy. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but in this case, you’re sure to find it if it’s there.

Next targets: cancer and Alzheimer’s disease

According to the Swiss Center for Allergies, about a quarter of the Swiss population exhibits various allergic symptoms. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology has announced that close to 50% of Americans suffer from allergies. On a global scale, all allergies, including food allergies, have been on the upswing since the mid-1950s. “The world market for diagnostics in 2011 was evaluated at more than 40 billion Swiss francs,” Durand reports.

The company’s objectives are equally promising; in addition to reducing the analysis time on their device even further, the start-up is already looking at the possibility of using the method to detect other diseases whose blood biomarkers will be commercially available, such as certain cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (news : web)

Cecilia Carron in Immunology

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USA - Allergy misconceptions: Why hay fever may be a good sign

If you're one of the millions of people coughing, sneezing, sputtering, and cursing your body's hypersensitivity to ragweed, trees, and grass this spring, researchers at Yale have what could be considered positive news: Seasonal allergies may be a sign that your immune system is doing what nature intended it to do -- protect you against environmental toxins that are far more harmful than pollen.

The paper appears in Nature.

The body’s defense arsenal consists of different types of immune responses to deal with various classes of pathogens. Type 1 immunity — which battles viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa — relies primarily on directly killing pathogens or infected host cells.

Type 2 immunity, the focus of this Perspectives piece, protects against external environmental challenges by spurring the body’s T cells and antibodies into action to fight the irritant. The problem is, type 2 immunity can go into overdrive when inadvertently activated by environmental antigens such as pollen.

Hay fever sufferers know the consequences all too well: The allergens such as pollen trigger an over-production of histamine, resulting in the coughing, sneezing, runny noses, and all-round misery that afflict them most severely in the spring and fall.

Nonetheless, the Yale authors argue that, despite the occasional misfiring, type 2 immunity is beneficial to humans. They write that this particular response of the host defense system evolved over time to protect us from at least four different classes of environmental challenges: helminthes (parasites), noxious chemicals, animal venoms, and environmental irritants.

But if type 2 immunity evolved over time to protect us, what is the purpose of sensing such small amounts of allergen when the levels are far too low to really harm us, and when a misfiring can cause such suffering?

Lead author Ruslan Medzhitov, professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, said, “We believe that allergic hypersensitivity evolved to survey the environment for the presence of noxious substances.

After the first exposure, the immune system gains a memory, and subsequent exposure to even minute amounts will induce an anticipatory response that helps minimize potentially harmful effects.” He added that such responses also encourage avoidance of the environment that contains the noxious substance. “According to this view, hypersensitivity to allergens triggers avoidance of a sub-optimal environment,” Medzhitov explained.

More information: http://www.nature. … re11047.html

Provided by Yale University (news : web)

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