Chapter 7 - Developments and emerging technologies in allergic and immunologic disease management

Abstract

The prevalence of allergic and immunologic diseases is increasing over the last few decades and has become a global health concern. With the advancement and increasing availability of high-throughput technologies, our understanding on the etiology as well as in approaches in diagnosing and treating allergic and immunologic diseases has been revolutionized. In this chapter, we discuss the emerging in vitro allergy assays in circumventing the suboptimality of current diagnostic methods, novel routes, and adjuvants applied in allergen-specific immunotherapy and their potential in improving safety profile and treatment outcome. Diagnostic assays for allergic diseases have evolved from singleplex to multiplex and also, from solid-phase to in vitro cellular-based assays. Component-resolved diagnosis, which stressed on the IgE reactivity against specific allergen components rather than whole allergen extracts, has revolutionized our diagnostic strategy and perception of cross-reactivity. Advances in the understanding of immunological mechanisms and pathogenesis have also inspired novel routes and adjuvants for allergy treatment. Furthermore, we discuss the parallel advances in omics technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) in allergic disease research. Omics studies are able to generate large datasets that reflect the interactions of genes, molecules, and/or cells that contribute to the disease phenotype under a hypothesis-free approach. AI, on the other hand, is a useful tool in analyzing enormous and complex datasets often seen in patients with allergic diseases because of their heterogenous genotype or phenotype. Without the constraint of a hypothesis-driven approach, novel genes, molecules, or cells can serve as useful biomarkers that contribute to our understanding and management of allergic diseases. In the last section of this chapter, we will also discuss how the management of immunodeficiency and autoimmune diseases can be bolstered by the integration of multiomics and AI approaches.