Lewis Lab Awarded the 2017 CTSC Highly Innovative Grant Toward Shellfish-Allergy Therapy

The Clinical and Translational Science Center has awarded the Immunomodulatory Biomaterials Lab (IMBL) with this year’s Highly Innovative grant to develop a microbe-mimicking particulate therapeutic for shellfish allergy.  

The overall objective of this CTSC pilot grant is to evaluate efficacy of a Polysaccharide-based microparticle system encapsulating hypoallergens to mitigate allergen-specific reactions in hypersensitized mice following oral administration.

This project incorporates both novel immunomodulatory biomaterials and engineered allergens to generate a system that is efficacious, safe and clinically translatable.

Through collaborative efforts between the biomedical engineering department (Lewis Lab), and the school of medicine (Patrick Leung – Rheumatology/ Clinical Immunology, Andreas Baumler – Microbiology), the results of this proposal, if successful, are expected to have a positive translational impact on therapy of shellfish allergy.