MONDAY, Oct. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Edible transgenic rice plants expressing the reactive segment of a common allergy-causing pollen can effectively immunize mice against the allergen, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
Fumio Takaiwa, of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Japan, and colleagues produced transgenic rice plants expressing mouse dominant T-cell epitopes of Japanese cedar pollen fused to a soybean storage protein. The seeds accumulated high levels of the vaccine, which were fed to mice as a powder.
Mice fed with the rice-based vaccine daily for four weeks had reduced IgE and CD4 T cell proliferative responses to a systemic challenge of cedar pollen, compared with mice fed seed powder from control plants. IL-4, IL-5 and IL-6 production were each down by at least 75% in cultured splenic CD4 T cells from immunized mice. Further, the vaccine reduced allergy-triggered sneezing in these mice after intranasal challenge with the pollen.
"The seed-expression system possesses several advantages for the production of recombinant proteins, such as simplicity of administration, low risk of contamination with animal pathogens, and low cost for production and long storage at room temperature," the authors write.
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