PhD Studentship: Strengthening the Skin Barrier to Reduce Transcutaneous Exposure to Food Allergens in the Early Years of Life

Supervisor

Professor Stuart Jones, stuart.jones@kcl.ac.uk, Director of the Centre for Pharmaceutical Medicine Research, Chair in Pharmaceutical Medicine, King's College London

Project Details

Allergic diseases are the most common chronic diseases in industrialised countries, with around 20% of children suffering from atopic dermatitis (AD). About 6% have food allergies (FA), with an estimated 2.5% of UK 3-year-olds displaying peanut allergy (Perkin et al., 2016 J Allergy Clin Immunol. May;137:1477-1486). It has been demonstrated that regular early-life gastrointestinal exposure to food protein can induce tolerance. However, regular oral allergen exposure in babies and young children is not easy, with only 42% compliance to the intervention (Perkin et al., 2016 N Engl J Med. 374(18):1733-43). As a result, there is a need for alternative approaches to prevent the development of food allergies in the early years of life are needed.

Systematic reviews of the literature (e.g., Tsakok et al., 2016 J Allergy Clin Immunol. 137:1071-1078.) and other human (Tordesillas et al., 2014 J Clin Invest. 124:4965-75.) and animal work (Strid et al., 2005 Clin Exp Allergy. 2005 Jun;35:757-66.) support the notion that FAs (in particular peanut allergy) develop through transcutaneous sensitisation in early life, especially in the presence of eczematous skin inflammation.  However, there is not a complete understanding how the food proteins induce this type of response and as yet there are no products that attempt to stop this from occurring. 

In this new project, the applicants will investigate how different approaches that can be used to strengthen the skin barrier could impact the extent of food allergen penetration into the tissue. We will work with a commercial partner, P&G, as it is hoped that gaining a better fundamental understanding of allergen penetration into the skin and assessing approaches to reduce this could, with subsequent work, generate a commercially viable product to reduce the incidence of food allergy.