Some Thoughts About Food Allergens
tiến sĩ Bùi Quốc Quang

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Food allergies could be gone within a decade if the combination of biotechnology and vaccines work as planned. The new tools to treat food allergy consist of biotechnology (hypoallergenic recombinant allergens) and vaccine development (novel adjuvants based on anti-inflammatory molecules from pathogens). Biotechnology has identified the specific molecules in foods (i.e., proteins) that induce allergic reactions and advances in genetic engineering techniques allow us to produce hypoallergenic variants of these protein molecules. Through protein engineering techniques, the hypoallergenic molecules will be re-introduced back in nature, and, hopefully, foods will no longer be a concern for allergic reaction. Therefore, contrary to most people's belief, genetically-modified foods are actually less allergenic then organic ones. In the field of immunology, much progress has been made in understanding the mechanism of allergic-specific immunotherapy.
At Genencor (where I am employed), we have in vitro assays and mammalian assays to identify alleles in lymphocytes responsible for allergic/inflammatory responses. Through protein engineering, it's now possible to alter the amino acid sequence and, hopefully, to develop successful "preventive" vaccines (next 10 years? well that's job security for me). Note that the allergen labelling regulations came into force last year and required companies to label foods if they contain any of the 12 listed allergenic foods as an ingredient: gluten, fish, crustaceans, egg, peanut, soybeans, milk and dairy products, nuts, celery, sesame seeds and sulfites (sorry, kiwi fruit does not make the list yet).
Until the next time, stay healthy
Ts Bui Quoc Quang

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