Mechanism-Based Biomarker Prediction for Low-Grade Inflammation in Liver and Adipose Tissue

Metabolic disorders, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes have a large impact on global health, especially in industrialized countries. Tissue-specific chronic low-grade inflammation is a key contributor to complications in metabolic disorders. To support therapeutic approaches to these complications, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding...

Nanomaterials and the serosal immune system in the thoracic and peritoneal cavities

The thoracic and peritoneal cavities are lined by serous membranes and are home of the serosal immune system. This immune system fuses innate and adaptive immunity, to maintain local homeostasis and repair local tissue damage, and to cooperate closely with the mucosal immune system. Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are found abundantly in the...

Invloed van leefstijlfactoren op de vatbaarheid, ziektebeloop en herstel van COVID-19

ZonMw heeft het Lifestyle4Health platform verzocht om, in een samenwerking van minimaal 2 partijen verbonden aan Lifestyle4Health, een kennisinventarisatie te verrichten in het kader van het COVID-19 programma van ZonMw. De inventarisatie moet een overzicht bieden van de reeds beschikbare wetenschappelijke kennis over de invloed van...

Seeking Windows of Opportunity to Shape Lifelong Immune Health A Network-Based Strategy to Predict and Prioritize Markers of Early Life Immune Modulation

A healthy immune status is strongly conditioned during early life stages. Insights into the molecular drivers of early life immune development and function are prerequisite to identify strategies to enhance immune health. Even though several starting points for targeted immune modulation have been identified and are being developed into...

A multi-center assessment to compare residual allergenicity of partial hydrolyzed whey proteins in a murine model for cow’s milk allergy – Comparison to the single parameter guinea pig model

Introduction This 4-center study is part of a project to validate a food allergy murine model for safety testing of hydrolyzed infant formulas. Aim The aim of the current multi-center experiment was to evaluate the residual allergenicity of three partial hydrolyzed whey proteins (pWH) in a multiple-parameter cow’s milk allergy murine model and...

Overview of in Vivo and Ex Vivo Endpoints in Murine Food Allergy Models: Suitable for Evaluation of the Sensitizing Capacity of Novel Proteins?

Significant efforts are necessary to introduce new dietary protein sources to feed a growing world population while maintaining food supply chain sustainability. Such a sustainable protein transition includes the use of highly modified proteins from side streams or the introduction of new protein sources that may lead to increased clinically...

Applying the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) for food sensitization to support in vitro testing strategies

Background: Before introducing proteins from new or alternative dietary sources into the market, a compressive risk assessment including food allergic sensitization should be carried out in order to ensure their safety. We have recently proposed the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) concept to structure the current mechanistic understanding of the...

A network-based approach for identifying suitable biomarkers for oral immunotherapy of food allergy

Background: Oral immunotherapy (OIT) is a promising therapeutic approach to treat food allergic patients. However, concerns with regards to safety and long-term efficacy of OIT remain. There is a need to identify biomarkers that predict, monitor and/or evaluate the effects of OIT. Here we present a method to select candidate biomarkers for...

Application of the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) concept to structure the available in vivo and in vitro mechanistic data for allergic sensitization to food proteins

Background: The introduction of whole new foods in a population may lead to sensitization and food allergy. This constitutes a potential public health problem and a challenge to risk assessors and managers as the existing understanding of the pathophysiological processes and the currently available biological tools for prediction of the risk for...

Interlaboratory evaluation of a cow's milk allergy mouse model to assess the allergenicity of hydrolysed cow's milk based infant formulas

This study describes two phases of a multi-phase project aiming to validate a mouse model for cow's milk allergy to assess the potential allergenicity of hydrolysed cow's milk based infant formulas (claim support EC-directive 2006/141/E). The transferability and the discriminatory power of this model was evaluated in 4 research centers. Mice...

The scaling of allergenic products for the hazard characterisation of new products

Evaluation of scientific criteria for identifying allergenic foods of public health importance

Identification of allergenic foods of public health importance should be based on well-defined criteria. Björkstén et al. (2008) proposed that the criteria should assess the evidence for an IgE mechanism, the reaction, the potency and the severity of the effect of the food and its prevalence. This study evaluated the application of the proposed...

Integration of efficacy, pharmacokinetic and safety assessment of interleukin-1 receptor antagonist in a preclinical model of arthritis

Pharmacokinetic properties and safety profile of a drug are likely influenced by the disease state of a patient. In this study, we investigated the influence of arthritic processes on pharmacokinetics and immunotoxicity of interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (Anakinra) in the rat adjuvant arthritis model. Anakinra dose-dependently suppressed joint...

Assessment of three human FcεRI-transfected RBL cell-lines for identifying IgE induced degranulation utilizing peanut-allergic patient sera and peanut protein extract

Specific IgE sera screening studies are employed to investigate protein cross-reactivity. Such nonfunctional immunochemical methods cannot measure the biological activity of proteins. Therefore, an assay using RBL cells transfected with human FcεRI was developed. Our objective was to evaluate the degranulation of three cell-lines expressing...

Identification and monitoring of effector and regulatory T cells during experimental arthritis based on differential expression of CD25 and CD134

Major problems in the analysis of CD4+ effector cell and regulatory T cell (Treg) populations in an activated immune system are caused by the facts that both cell types can express CD25 and that the discriminatory marker forkhead box p3 can only be analyzed in nonviable (permeabilized) cells. Here, we show that CD134 (OX40) can be used as a...