The contribution of biotechnology towards progress in diagnosis, management, and treatment of allergic diseases

1. Oscar Palomares, 
2. Reto Crameri
3.  and
4. Claudio Rhyner
   
5. Allergy Accepted Article (Accepted, unedited articles published online and citable. The final edited and typeset version of record will appear in future.) DOI: 10.1111/all.12533

Keywords:

• Biotechnology;
• Allergy;
• Recombinant Allergens;
• Immunotherapy

Abstract

“Biotechnology” has been intuitively used by humans since thousands of years for the production of foods, beverages and drugs based on experience without any scientific background. However, the golden era of this discipline emerged only during the second half of the last century. Incredible progresses have been achieved on all fields starting from the industrialization of the production of foods, to the discovery of antibiotics, the decipherment of the genetic code, and rational approaches to understand and define the status we now call “healthy”. The extremely complex interactions between genetic background, life style and environmental factors influencing our continuously increasing life span become more and more evident, and steadily generate new questions which are only partly answered. Here we try to summarize the contribution of biotechnology to our understanding, control, and cure of IgE-mediated allergic diseases. We aware, that a review of such a vast topic can never cover all aspects of the progress achieved in the different fields.

Get PDF (361K)