Protein Allergenicity: Rat Model

Abstract

The possibilities of modern biotechnology have resulted in the introduction of new generations of food and food ingredients and this process is expected to continue further in the near future. In particular, the development and market introduction of genetically engineered food crops has gained much attention in the past few years. For these novel foods, a toxicological evaluation and risk assessment are in most cases major items in their safety evaluation. In food, some proteins (i.e., proteins from peanut, egg-white, tree nuts, fish, etc.) are responsible for the development of food allergy. The potential allergenicity of genetically engineered crops, usually containing novel proteins from nonfood origins, has become an important issue in safety evaluation. There is, however, no universal, reliable, and relevant single test to evaluate the allergenic potency of food products and a case-by-case approach is suggested (1). The best known allergy approach, in which the source of the gene plays a central role, was developed jointly by the International Biotechnology Council and the International Life Science Institute (ILSI) Allergy and Immunology Institute and published in 1996 (2). This so-called IFBC=ILSI decision tree recommended, based on the data available then, that when transgenic proteins were derived from nonfood sources a careful stepwise process should be followed. Attention should be given to several factors, including amino acid sequence homology and various physicochemical properties such as heat and digestive stability of the protein. For transgenic products derived from known allergenic foods several in vitro and in vivo test are available, using allergic patients and=or their serum, that will most likely result in a conclusive assessment of its potential allergenicity. Unfortunately,