Several trials on mice revealed that the nanoparticle treatment was able to improve the animal’s peanut tolerance.
Mrigakshi Dixit – Apr 04, 2023 11:00 AM EST
Nearly three million Americans are said to be allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. Not just this, approximately one in every fifty children suffers from peanut allergies, which can sometimes result in a fatal immune reaction.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are developing the first mRNA-based medicine to treat peanut allergies. The treatment has been inspired by the way mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines function.
“As far as we can find, mRNA has never been used for an allergic disease. We’ve shown that our platform can work to calm peanut allergies, and we believe it may be able to do the same for other allergens, in food and drugs, as well as autoimmune conditions,” said Dr. André Nel, the paper’s co-corresponding author, in a statement.
For this treatment, they delivered the mRNA inside a nanoparticle to the liver, where it targeted specific cells to tolerate peanut proteins.
The nanoparticles were tested on mice, which demonstrated that the medicine not only reversed peanut allergies but also prevented the development of severe conditions.
The findings were reported in the journal ACS Nano.
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Read more at: https://interestingengineering.com/health/peanut-allergies-may-be-treatable-mrna-based-medicine.