Pioneering research on peanut allergies at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) was recently fueled by a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to accelerate discovery of treatments. The research will explore how to match therapies to patients. Erik Wambre, PhD, and William Kwok, PhD, are the co-principal investigators for the studies, with Peter Linsley, PhD, serving as Project Leader for Gene Expression and Systems Immunology.

The project is a collaboration involving three BRI labs, Virginia Mason physicians and sponsors of two clinical trials that are continents apart. The researchers are hoping to discover more efficient and safer treatment options for peanut allergies than are currently available. “Ultimately, this study has the potential to truly upend the way we look at food allergy diagnosis and treatment,” says Jane Buckner, MD, President of Benaroya Research Institute.

For the second part of the study, samples from two ongoing clinical trials will be investigated to pave the way for personalized medicine in food allergy. “If we can identify the key peanut protein fragment recognized by an individual’s immune response, we can determine whether that patient will experience less of a side effect from that therapy,” says Dr. Kwok. 

Effectiveness of Treatment

According to Dr. Wambre, “The goal is to follow patients currently receiving treatment to look at the differences in immune response between groups of patients and understand how that response correlates with treatment effectiveness and side effects that the patients experience.”

What they discover could guide the design of a new strategy for immune intervention and provide a framework for applying precision medicine in peanut allergy. This study will also allow researchers to identify whether there are differences between children and adults receiving the same kind of therapy for peanut allergy. 

 “This will be the first demonstration that peanut allergy may no longer be considered a single entity with a ‘one size fits all’ approach to treatment,” states Dr. Linsley, who leads the­­­­ data science core that serves as the bridge between the two parts of the study. His team provides state-of-the-art technology and data analytics, incorporating BRI’s tetramer tool, developed by Dr. Kwok, and single cell transcription, which allows researchers to isolate cells that recognize peanut protein. Those cells’ qualities are then analyzed by Dr. Linsley’s team.

Major Advances

Benaroya Research Institute scientists have been involved in several major food allergy-related discoveries in the last couple years. These include BRI’s 2017 TH2A allergy cell discovery and the 2016 Immune Tolerance Network-sponsored LEAP clinical trial to prevent peanut allergy in children. Also, Drs. Kwok, Wambre and Robinson have teamed up to publish at least 16 papers in the area of allergy. Since 2016, Virginia Mason and BRI have been members of the Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE) Clinical Network.