Preface

Pollen allergy is an important public problem and one of the most common causes of chronic ill health in the western societies. More than 25% of the population suffers from IgE-mediated allergies (including children and adults) which therefore represent a major challenge of our society, particularly because untreated allergy often progresses to severe disabling forms of disease. This allergic disease has increased in prevalence during the past decades and a major increase has been predicted.

Today allergen-specific immunotherapy is being established as the only allergenspecific and disease-modifying approach toward the treatment for IgE-mediated allergies and has long lasting effects. Up until now, commonly used treatments have been focused on relief of the clinical symptoms to alleviate allergic inflammation rather than underlying immune mechanisms, i.e. antihistamine and topical corticosteroids. In addition, conventional immunotherapy involves administration of natural allergen extracts containing mixture of undefined components with potential to induce a life-threatening anaphylactic response and new IgE-mediated reactivity and/or sensitizations to previously non-exposes allergens.

At present, there is not universal cure for pollen allergy, and the disease can only be managed by allergens avoidance or treatment of symptoms. However, there is exciting new knowledge as these presented in this book "the cultivar issues", which may help in the improvement of clinical trial, diagnosis and development of potential new therapies.

Researchers in the field are working hard to understand the mechanisms of allergy, and the disease-causing allergens are being characterized in great detail down to their molecular structures and cellular and physiological functions. Advances in molecular biology have led to an exponential increase in our understanding of molecular pathways involved in the manifestation of type 1 allergy symptoms, which also has pave the road for a significant advance in the development of a cure or vaccine for atopic allergic diseases.

Biochemical and molecular approaches together with computational biology, especially the informatics tools for allergen epitopes identification, structural characterization for designing allergy vaccines, have provided the knowledge to

#### VIII Preface

resolve structural features of allergen molecules and develop safer form of specific immunotherapy. Various others strategies and approaches are ongoing research programs including cellular and immunological mechanisms of therapy, genetic modification of allergens, hypoallergenic proteins chimera production, DNA vaccines, anti-IgE therapy, different routes of vaccine delivery, reduction of the allergen proteins content in plant-derived food by using RNAi technology, improved production systems for recombinant allergens.

Having this global vision, it seems that we are driving in the right direction to be able developing new and rational forms of diagnosis and therapy strategies. This way holds promise for curing pollen allergy sufferers and eventually may allow real prophylactic vaccination against allergy, i.e. tailored vaccines, or these based in pollen allergen proteins from defined cultivars.

> **Dr. José C. Jiménez-López** Purdue University, USA

VIII Preface

systems for recombinant allergens.

allergen proteins from defined cultivars.

resolve structural features of allergen molecules and develop safer form of specific immunotherapy. Various others strategies and approaches are ongoing research programs including cellular and immunological mechanisms of therapy, genetic modification of allergens, hypoallergenic proteins chimera production, DNA vaccines, anti-IgE therapy, different routes of vaccine delivery, reduction of the allergen proteins content in plant-derived food by using RNAi technology, improved production

Having this global vision, it seems that we are driving in the right direction to be able developing new and rational forms of diagnosis and therapy strategies. This way holds promise for curing pollen allergy sufferers and eventually may allow real prophylactic vaccination against allergy, i.e. tailored vaccines, or these based in pollen

**Dr. José C. Jiménez-López**

Purdue University,

USA

**Chapter 1** 

© 2012 de Dios Alché et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 de Dios Alché et al., licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

**Pollen Allergenicity is Highly Dependent** 

Juan de Dios Alché, Adoración Zafra, Jose Carlos Jiménez-López,

Type I hypersensibility to pollen is an important cause of allergy worldwide. In other types of allergy like the food allergic symptoms or very frequently the oral allergy syndrome (OAS), clear differences between varieties/cultivars of the same or highly-related plant species have been described as regard to the expression of allergens and their allergenic

Pioneer studies were carried out in date palm tree over the later years of the last century (Kwaasi et al 1999, 2000). Such studies indicated that allergenicity to date fruit was a cultivar-specific phenomenon, and laboratory data showed that individual cultivars varied in their number of IgE immunoblot bands. Sera from fruit-allergic as well as pollen-allergic patients recognized common fruit-specific epitopes. Also, there was heterogeneity in patient responses to the different extracts. Nevertheless, a number of common allergens were

Up to date, similar studies have been carried out in an important number of plants, mainly those producing edible fruits like apple (Asero et al 2006; Rur 2007; Matthes and Schmitz-Eiberger 2009; Vlieg-Boerstra et al 2011), peach (Brenna et al 2004; Ahrazem et al 2007; Chen et al 2008), cherry (Verschuren, http://www.appliedscience.nl/doc/Onderzoek\_111117 \_Martie\_Verschuren.pdf), nectarine (Ahrazem et al 2007), tomato (Dölle et al 2011), strawberry (Muñoz et al 2010), and lichy (Hoppe et al 2006) among others, and in seeds like cereals (Nakamura et al 2005), buckwheat (Maruyama-Funatsuki et al 2004) and peanuts

**on the Plant Genetic Background:** 

Sonia Morales, Antonio Jesús Castro, Fernando Florido

and María Isabel Rodríguez-García

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/52815

**1. Introduction** 

importance.

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

responsible for cross-reactivity between the cultivars.

(Kang et al 2007; Kottapallia et al 2008).

**The "Variety"/"Cultivar" Issues** 

#### **Chapter 1**
