Sloan Lewis, Ph.D.

What if we can identify new ways of diagnosing and treating milk allergy in children?

Funded: January 2023
Funded By: The generosity of the Rosemary Kraemer Raitt Foundation Trust

Cow’s milk allergy is the most common food allergy in infants and young children, and the prevalence is increasing. There are no approved treatments except avoidance, which is dangerous because of the widespread use of cow’s milk in food products. To make things more challenging, we do not currently have reliable ways of diagnosing food allergy, making this research critically important. A specific immune cell, the monocyte, is known to be involved in inflammatory diseases, but the role these cells play in the causes and effects of food allergy has yet to be explored. For my SPARK project, I am analyzing monocytes in a cohort of children with cow’s milk allergy to try to discover an “immune signature,” or a special signal from the cell that we can detect. We could then try to use that immune signature for diagnosing cow’s milk allergy or potentially try to target these cells in treatment.

I have performed some preliminary experiments to determine the percentages of monocytes within total blood immune cells in pediatric donors. I am now optimizing the stimulation of immune cell populations with cow milk extract and a cow milk peptide pool to see how monocytes respond. This will lead to the main experiment for my project, which will allow me to assess monocyte immune signatures of cow’s milk allergy.

SPARKing Impact: A specific immune cell, the monocyte, is known to be involved in inflammatory diseases, but the role these cells play in the causes and effects of food allergy has yet to be explored. My goal is to discover a special immune signal that could be used to improve diagnostics and treatment of this disease.