Unbiased Quantitative Proteomics Reveals a Crucial Role of the Allergen Context for the Activation of Human Dendritic Cells
L. Strasser, H.-H. Dang, H. Schwarz, C. Asam, F. Ferreira, J. Horejs-Hoeck, C. G. Huber

Abstract:
Worldwide, more than 1 billion people suffer from allergic diseases. However, until now it is not fullyunderstood how certain proteins can induce allergic immune responses, while others cannot. Studiessuggest that allergenicity is a process not only determined by properties of the allergen itself but alsoby costimulatory factors, that are not classically associated with allergic reactions. To investigate theallergenicity of the major birch pollen allergen Bet v 1 and the impact of adjuvants associated withpollen, e.g. lipopolysaccharide (LPS), we performed quantitative proteome analysis to study theactivation of monocyte-derived dendritic cells (moDCs). Thus, we treated cells with birch pollen extract(BPE), recombinant Bet v 1, and LPS followed by proteomic profiling via high-performance liquidchromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) using isobaric labelling. Enrichmentand pathway analysis revealed the influence of regulated proteins especially in cytokine signallingand dendritic cell activation. We found highly regulated, but differentially expressed proteins aftertreatment with BPE and LPS, whereas the cellular response to Bet v 1 was limited. Our findings leadto the conclusion that Bet v 1 needs a specific “allergen context” involving cofactors apart from LPS toinduce an immune response in human moDCs.

The open access article can be found  here.

Reviewed by Hans Brandstetter