Stephen Dreskin
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Peanut and tree nut allergies affect roughly 4% of children and up to 2% of adults in the United States. Early introduction of these foods and oral immunotherapy, which builds tolerance with gradually increasing doses, help some patients, especially alongside drugs that block IgE, the antibody class that triggers allergic reactions.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biochemistry
- Topics
food allergy
peanut allergy
tree nut allergy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Optimize IgE binding to known 2S albumin peptides and discover new ones by positional amino acid screening, which systematically substitutes each residue in a peptide to find the strongest-binding version.
- Use click chemistry and peptide stapling to lock peptides into IgE-binding shapes and make them resistant to digestive proteases, a requirement for any oral peptide therapy.
- Test whether peanut and selected tree nut 2S albumins share cross-reacting IgE-binding epitopes that could explain co-allergy among walnut, pecan, cashew and pistachio.
- Measure IgE binding to peptide microarrays using well-defined serum samples from peanut- and tree-nut-allergic patients, including clinical trial participants, to assess whether binding patterns predict clinical outcomes.
More about the research
But these approaches do not work for everyone, are hard to stick with, and reactions can break through unpredictably. Diagnosis is also difficult: many people make IgE against several nuts, yet only some actually react to more than one food, so true co-allergy is hard to tell apart from mere co-sensitization. The guiding idea here is that the 2S albumins, a family of small seed storage proteins, are the most important allergens in peanuts and tree nuts, and therefore the key to explaining cross-reactivity and to building better tests.
Why it matters
Reactions to peanuts and tree nuts are a common and sometimes dangerous problem, and current treatments are inadequate. Mapping which parts of 2S albumin proteins IgE antibodies grab could explain why some patients react to several nuts, sharpen blood tests so clinicians can tell real multi-nut allergy from harmless sensitization, and provide the building blocks for an oral peptide-based treatment for peanut allergy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Werner Braun
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX·Biochemistry
Add 3D protein structures predicted by AlphaFold-2, a structure-prediction program, to AllergenAI, a machine learning allergen predictor. Model all proteins in the SDAP 2.0, COMPARE and AlgPred databases to improve the tool's ability to distinguish allergens from non-allergens.
Stephanie Eisenbarth
Northwestern University, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether gut B cells must switch to IgG1 before switching to IgA to generate the highest-affinity IgA after oral immunization in mice, and map where this sequential switching occurs in mouse and human Peyer's patches using imaging and spatial transcriptomics.
Chris Kieslich
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Computer Science
Build predictors of antigen processing that estimate which peptide fragments a cell actually produces when it degrades a protein, combining molecular models of the cutting machinery with statistical analysis of large public peptide datasets.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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