Team:UT-Tokyo/Allergy abstract

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UT-Tokyo

Allergy

Abstract Construct

Abstract

Making the desensitization immunotherapy super-efficient

There are lots of people over the world suffering allergic disease, and numerous therapies being developed. In recent years, fundamental treatment called specific oral tolerance induction (SOTI) has been developed, which is different from conventional treatment. The intention of the fundamental treatment is to “dull” the immune system inside intestines by inducing epitope (the recognition site of allergen) deliberately and consecutively. Our goal is to design and build the system of the treatment by bio-brick, put it into E.coli and operate them in the living cells, implement them as an effective drug.


“Grasp the situation outside and think by themselves”: ideal drugs

In current SOTI, patients have to intake the epitope every day. However, by inputting the system original to creatures like “secret epitopes constantly”, and “output flexibly by sensing the situation outside”, we can make a new remedy with fewer side effects and less burdens for patients – the ideal allergy drug which can “grasp the situation outside, and think by themselves”. First, we will make E.coli able to secret epitopes constantly. Because E.colis can settle in our intestines for a long period, once we took drug, they’ll settle in our intestines, constantly secret epitopes. This will set us free form taking drugs every day and lessen the frequency of administration remarkably.

Moreover, we make E.colis able to increase the amount of epitopes secretion according to signals from outside. By this system, we can realize the step – increase the intake of epitopes gradually - which is essential to desensitization immunotherapy with no further burden.

In case that side effect was occurred by over-secretion of epitopes, we need to stop the production of epitopes immediately. We are going to make E.colis able to “decide to stop” the production. Input the fail safe system of sensing the inflammatory cytokine and stop the product of epitopes automatically into E.colis, we can make practical drugs able to think.


The possibility of order-made therapy

The system we are making can be a universal allergic therapy easily, by changing the epitope to the other according to the types of allergy. For example, if you have shrimp allergy and pollen allergy, you can use epitope of shrimp and pollen to treat your allergy with pinpoint precision.

When this therapy comes to the practical step, we can do the desensitization immunotherapy safely by extracting E.colis in patient intestines, introduce the genes and replace them to intestines without collapsing balances of intestine E.coli colonies and immune system. By such made-to-order therapy, we think we can realize an ideal allergy therapy.