Use of a rat basophil leukemia (RBL) cell-based immunological assay for allergen identification, clinical diagnosis of allergy, and identification of anti-allergy agents for use in immunotherapy

Figures & data

Table 1. Main characteristics of an ideal cell model.

• Release mediators after IgE/antigen sensitization

• Easily available and reproducible between laboratories

• Specific for discriminating potent food allergens from allergenic to non-allergenic proteins

• Sensitive for distinguishing threshold beyond which significant allergic response would be predicted

Figure 1. Pictures of mediator release of mouse mast cells and RBL cells (arrows). (A) Mast cells in small intestine of Balb/c mice stained with toluidine blue for microscopic examination (Type DM 1000, Leica, Geneva, Switzerland). (B) RBL cells examined by fluorescent inverted microscope (Type TH4-200, Olympus, Tokyo, Japan).

Table 2. Summary of cell models for allergenicity evaluation and clinical diagnosis.

Cell models	Protocol	Strengths	Weaknesses	References
Murine peritoneal  mast cells	Histamine release	Sensitive, specific	Requires purification, semi-permanent cultivation	Guo et al. (2009)
Human basophils	Histamine release	Specific	Measure of histamine is difficult	Crockard & Ennis (2001); Mittag et al. (2004); Toda et al. (2011)
Human basophils	Basophil activation	Specific	Consecutive blood sampling to obtain the basophils	Sainte-Laudy et al. (1994, 1996); Sabbah et al. (1997, 1998); Hauswirth et al. (2002); Kahlert et al. (2003); Buhring et al. (2004); Ocmant et al. (2009); Mayorga et al. (2010)
RBL cells	β-hexosaminidase release assay	Easily available; permanent cultivation; sensitive, specific and reproducible	Allergen-binding patterns of mouse and human sera might not be fully identical	Hoffmann et al. (1997, 1999); Ballmer-Weber et al. (2002); Kaul et al. (2007)
Humanized RBL cells	β-hexosaminidase release assay	Easily available; permanent cultivation; sensitive, specific and reproducible	Rare allergens for which human sera are difficult to obtain	Gilfillan et al. (1992); Takagi et al. (2003); Taudou et al. (1993); Dibbern et al. (2003); Untersmayr et al. (2005); Vogel et al. (2005, 2006); Kaul et al. (2007); Ladics et al. (2008); Blanc et al. (2009)

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