An allergy is a serious thing. There is a perception that allergies are nuisances, quirks of the human body that must be lived with. Some allergies, though, can be deadly, as with severe cases of asthma or particular food allergies... and they can be dealt with just like any other disease. True allergies are more accurately called allergic diseases and just as with any other disease, a cure can be found.

Allergic disease has a very broad range of types and a broader range of allergic triggers. There are estimates that state that more than 50% of Americans are subject to some form of allergic disease. The chief difference in these cases is the severity. All allergic diseases are manifested by an immune system over-reaction to a substance that the body should not normally identify as dangerous, and that reaction can be something as basic as a mild irritant or it can be so extreme as to cause fatal results in the human body.

Bjoern Peters, Ph.D., is taking a very close look at allergens (allergic disease causing agents) and how they interact with the human body. The human body is constantly bombarded with allergens; they are simply everywhere. An immune system functioning properly should meet these allergens with a T-Cell (white blood cell types that aid the immune system) response that downplays the reaction to the allergen. However, it's a bit of a mystery what it is about the allergens and the immune system that allow allergic disease to take hold in certain individuals.

In a five-year project that will deal with hundreds of human clinical test subjects, Peters is taking advantage of his bioinformatics background to tackle the problem of allergic disease on a scale never before attempted. As a bioinformaticist, Peters is able to combine computational skills with research expertise to create a much more efficient form of testing that will enable his project to have the scope necessary to thoroughly test allergic response in humans.

Peters will be looking at the allergens themselves to determine how their epitopes function. An epitope is the smallest fragment of an entity that the human body can use to determine how it should respond to that entity. So, by determining what epitopes are active on an allergen, Peters hopes to be able to determine just how it activates a response in the human body.

Very little is known about the process by which allergic disease takes hold in humans, but Peters has hope that his research will be able to expand upon the fundamental research in the field of allergic disease, but also that he'll uncover specific functions of allergens that will enable more direct clinical solutions for people everywhere.

LIAI's Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), a project headed up by Peters along with Alex Sette, Ph.D. and Steve Wilson, Ph.D., can also assist Peters in his research. The Database is intended to be a global resource on epitope information, formed from data gathered from thousands of research papers from around the world. With the wealth of information that he can glean from the IEDB, Peters can help to better focus his allergen research efforts.