Recombinant allergens and applications

Abstract

Recombinant DNA technology has great potential in various aspects of allergen-related research and clinical applications. Sufficient amounts of purified wild-type or immunologically modified allergens or fragments have been produced in heterologous expression systems for use in many research fields, such as molecular characterization of the allergen (e.g., three-dimensional structure and epitope mapping), allergen standardization, component-resolved diagnosis (CRD) and patient-tailored specific immunotherapy (SIT). Strategies for obtaining recombinant allergens generally involve three steps, with the choice of heterologous expression system, bacteria, yeast, insect or plant cell, and the purification methods being of major importance. Here we review the major methods used for determining the three-dimensional structure and for epitope mapping, the recent progress in the application of recombinant allergens in clinical research of allergenic disease, such as the recombinant allergen-based microarray diagnosis and therapeutic vaccine.