Imagine if your child's peanut allergy was discovered before it even manifested as a deadly problem, and a vaccine was available to prevent it from developing.
Scientists at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason Medical Center received a federal grant from the National Institutes of Health for $2.2 million last week to find a biomarker that triggers allergies. The grant will add to other work from Benaroya investigating the cellular mechanisms behind allergies and asthma to understand how the diseases progress.
The hope is that discovering the biomarker could eventually lead to an elimination of allergies.
“Our aim is to develop a simple blood test to predict the likelihood of resolution of an allergy during therapy and identify people who will develop an allergy before the first symptoms are experienced," Erik Wambre, the principal investigator for the grant at Benaroya said in a statement. "This is especially important in at-risk people, such as children with a life-threatening food allergy.”
More than 25 percent of Americans suffer from allergies and asthma, with allergies affecting more than 50 million and asthma affecting approximately 20 million, according to Benaroya, which is a leading institution in allergy research.
In a region well-known for its cancer research and biotechnology companies, this grant puts the spotlight on a different kind of cutting-edge research going on in the area.
Currently, Wambre said that part of the reason researchers don't fully understand which therapies will work to cure allergies is because they don't fully understand how allergies work within the body.
“If we can identify the biomarkers at the beginning of the allergic chain reaction, we can get ahead of the symptoms and try to find a therapy that will eliminate the allergy at the first step," he said.