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Food Allergens pp 189-198 | Cite as

T-Cell Proliferation Assay: Determination of Immunodominant T-Cell Epitopes of Food Allergens

Protocol
First Online:
Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB, volume 1592)

Abstract

Characterization of allergen-specific T cells is critical to understand their contribution to disease pathogenesis. The identification of immunodominant T-cell epitopes is crucial for development of T-cell-based vaccines. Peptide-specific T-cell proliferation studies are usually performed in a library of short synthetic peptides (15mer or 20mer) with 3 or 5 offset spanning the entire length of the allergen. T-cell peptide epitopes lack the primary and tertiary structure of the native protein to cross-link IgE, but retain the ability to stimulate T cells. The peptides sequences can also be obtained either by in silico approaches and in vitro binding assays. The efficacy of T-cell epitope-based peptide immunotherapy has been proven in certain allergies. The present methodology describes T-cell proliferation assays using whole blood sample from allergic subjects.

Key words

T cell T cell proliferation Peptides Epitopes Thymidine incorporation 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Division of Allergy and Immunology, Department of PediatricsThe Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount SinaiNew YorkUSA
  2. 2.Immunology Institute and The Mindich Child Health and Development InstituteMount Sinai School of MedicineNew YorkUSA
  3. 3.Immunology Department, CDB, Hospital Clinic de BarcelonaUniversitat de BarcelonaBarcelonaSpain
  4. 4.Pediatric Allergy and ImmunologyIcahn School of Medicine at Mount SinaiNew YorkUSA
  5. 5.The Jaffe Food Allergy InstituteIcahn School of Medicine at Mount SinaiNew YorkUSA

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