Global pharmaceutical company ALK and McMaster University have recently seen the fruits of their collaboration by discovering a novel memory B cell that they’ve named the type-2 memory B cell (MBC2).
The cell type seems to play a fundamental role in the propagation of allergic responses and is a significant step forward in the knowledge of allergy disease biology.
Treating allergies like never before
MBC2s have been linked to the initiation of allergies owing to their role in producing IgE (immunoglobulin E), an antibody that is significantly elevated in those patients with the condition. Peter Sejer Andersen, Senior Vice President of Global Research and Drug Discovery at ALK, states: “It’s clear that there’s a significant unmet need in the treatment of allergies, especially when considering food sensitivities. There's a lot of people suffering from these types of reactions, but no real solution apart from avoidance.”
“With this discovery, we can try to understand — in more detail — how allergy occurs, as well as guide our focus when developing therapeutics. We can further investigate changing the course of the disease, focusing on reprogramming or eliminating MBC2s,” he continues.
“Finding the cells that hold IgE memory is a key step forward and a game-changer in our understanding of what causes an allergy and how treatment, such as immunotherapy, can modify the disease.”
Nipping allergies in the bud
As well as treating established allergies, therapeutics designed to manipulate MBC2 formation could halt allergy progression before it fully establishes, which could lead to a significant reduction of those affected globally: “To successfully treat patients, it would be best to stop these B memory cells from forming in the first place. You could most likely do that in multiple ways and observing these cells in culture with exposure to various reagents would help us to figure out what manipulations are feasible and efficacious for treatment. With this newfound knowledge, we’re able to cater experiments to bring our understanding and treatment capabilities forward.”
Peter Sejer Andersen, Senior Vice President of Global Research and Drug Discovery at ALK
Technology aids discovery
The finding came from a 3-year partnership between ALK and McMaster University, with both organisations being involved in the field of immunology for several years. “We provided a lot of data from human clinical trials for this discovery, as well as novel transcriptomics technologies, which allowed for a more detailed analysis of the origin of IgE memory. What we discovered using transcriptomics wouldn’t be possible with older cell staining techniques such as FACS (Fluorescence activated cell sorting flow cytometry).”
Mr Sejer Andersen continues: “McMasters also offered additional cell sorting and translational technologies and focused most of their efforts on research with murine models. The combination and utilisation of our joint knowhow and new technologies ultimately led to the discovery of MBC2s.”
Broadening our understanding
Although this discovery moves scientists forward in many ways, further research will need to be done to understand the disease biology of allergies, as well as how therapeutics can best target MBC2s.
ALK has plans to do this in the pipeline: “We would like to leverage on this discovery and do a lot more to figure out the biology of allergies, allowing us to manage and prevent this disease type. ALK is also looking to understand the mechanisms that allow allergy immunotherapies to function and how MBC2s respond to these treatments.”
