Researchers say they've found the 'smoking gun' for tackling life-long allergies
CTV
For the first time, researchers have isolated a cell responsible for remembering allergies and triggering the production of the antibodies that cause the allergic reaction—a 'ground-breaking discovery' which paves the way to develop treatments that could turn off an allergic response.
Being able to simply turn off your allergies sounds like a dream—but a new discovery shaking the foundations of allergy research might have just made that possible.
For the first time, researchers say, a team has isolated a cell responsible for remembering allergies and triggering the production of antibodies that cause the allergic reaction.
It’s a “ground-breaking discovery,” researchers say, which paves way for treatments that could potentially shut off an allergic response completely.
“Before the discovery of this cell, we didn't really know exactly what it was that we were trying to go after. And so now, basically, we have the smoking gun, we know this is the thing that is keeping people allergic,” Josh Koenig, assistant professor with McMaster’s Department of Medicine and co-lead of the study, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Tuesday.
“And our job now is to find ways to inactivate it.”
Researchers with McMaster University and Denmark-based pharmaceutical company ALK-Abello discovered that a type-2 memory B cell (MBC2) was making the antibodies found in allergic reactions. People without allergies had very few memory B cells, if any, researchers found.
B cells are one of the types of immune cells that work to protect our body during an immune response.
