Nasal Immune Responses to Allergy Shots
Local adaptive immune responses during allergen immunotherapy
A pilot using simple nasal swabs to sample immune cells in the adenoids and nasal lining of people with airborne allergies, to learn how allergy shots retrain the immune system.
Christopher Allen, PhD · Allergy
Overview
Allergen immunotherapy (allergy shots) reduces symptoms of airborne allergies and allergic asthma, but how it changes the immune system is unclear, because most studies have looked only at blood. This seed project uses a non-invasive nasal swab, adapted from COVID research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, to sample the adenoids, a lymph tissue at the back of the nose, along with a paired swab of the nasal lining. Swabs from up to 12 patients at the UCSF Allergy and Immunology Clinic, comparing people about to start immunotherapy with those on long-term maintenance, are profiled with flow cytometry and single-cell sequencing of B and T cells. The goal is to show this approach works and lay the groundwork for following patients over time.
The collection
- Collection model
- Investigator-led study
- Specimen types
- Nasal swabs (nasopharyngeal/adenoid and inferior turbinate)
- Assays and data types
- Flow cytometryCITE-seqTCR/BCR sequencing
- Participants
- Patients with airborne (aeroallergen) allergies at the UCSF Allergy and Immunology Clinic, before starting or on maintenance allergen immunotherapy
- Disease areas
- Allergic rhinoconjunctivitisAllergic asthma
People and partners
- Lead investigator
- Christopher Allen, PhD
- Department
- Anatomy
- Sites
- UCSF Allergy and Immunology Clinic
- Collaborators
- Mark Ansel and Monica Tang (co-PIs); Shane Crotty (La Jolla Institute for Immunology); ImmunoX CoLabs (Disease to Biology, Flow Cytometry, Genomics, Data Science)