| Biography | |
|---|---|
 Prof. Zhihua Wu Nanchang University, China |
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| Title: Peanut allergy: the role of conformational structure | |
| Abstract: Peanut, a common food in daily life, is the most serious food allergen; it contains 16 allergens belonging to seven families and could be induced not only by oral intake but also through skin and airway exposure. Strictly avoiding peanut is the only solution for patients with peanut allergy at present. Peanut allergy is an IgE-mediated food adverse reaction, the IgE epitopes include linear and conformational forms. Recent research focused on processing hypoallergens with a common feature of modification that may involve in conformational epitopes. In which, circular dichroism spectrum (CD) and ultraviolet spectrum (UV) were used to detect the changes of protein conformational structure (secondary and tertiary structure). Their visual structure could be obtained by molecular dynamic simulations, but was seldom shown and analyzed in study. Processing always leads to structural expansion, sometimes along with aggregate, which may destroy conformational epitopes and promote antigens more susceptible to be degraded by digestive enzymes and then affects uptake across intestinal epithelium or reaction with IgE, resulting in decreased allergenicity. However, the critical conformation related to allergenicity remain unclear. Fortunately, some modified allergens became potentially pharmacy for immunotherapy without clear structure. In the future, modification on the critical conformational structure is expected to promote hypoallergen desensitization processing and allergy immune treatment. | |
