Some news I always like to hear (being in the wet, allergy-prone Midwest), a new research from the University College London branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR), published in this week’s Nature, detail how inactivating a key signalling molecule called p110delta reduced the effect of allergies on mice. In mice lacking the gene for p110delta, the allergic response was reduced substantially; in normal mice that had been treated with an experimental drug inhibiting p110delta, the allergic response was stopped completely.
Experts estimate that, in the UK alone, one in three people will suffer from some form of allergy during their lifetime; some nine million people suffer from hay fever, six million from eczema and five million from asthma each year. In the most extreme circumstances, an allergic reaction can be life-threatening or even fatal. The p110delta could also play a role in certain tumours, like leukemia, and that targeting the p110delta pathway may one day also be useful in the treatment of cancer.
See details here.
