Now that’s cracking: Israeli scientists invent the ‘safe peanut’

Four experienced a "minimal reaction" but the rest were deemed to be safe from accidental exposure to peanuts.

Traditional immunotherapy focuses on training the immune system to accept the allergen. But the team at Sheba Medical Centre, in Tel Aviv, team flipped the concept.

“We actually invented a new peanut," said Professor Mona Kidon, the lead researcher and Head of the Food Allergy Research Programme.

“Instead of making the immune system adapt to the peanut, [we said] let's make the peanut a little bit different.”

The peanut cookies, named Mona Cookies after her, act as medication, gradually training the immune system over time not to react.

The 'safe peanut' biscuits, named 'Mona cookies' (Image: Sheba Medical Centre)[Missing Credit]

“An allergy is actually a wrong decision," said Prof Kidon. “Your immune system is deciding that these proteins that you see in milk or in egg or in peanuts are something that are really dangerous.”

But they’re mistaken. In normal peanuts, the proteins are tightly folded into 3D balls that trick the immune system into panic mode.

Prof Kidon and her team spent seven years researching how to "unfold" these balls, so the immune cells can "see" that they pose no threat. They chill out instead of attacking.

In a joint project with the Volcani Institute, Israel's national agricultural research hub based in Rishon LeZion, the team at Sheba developed the “don't panic” Mona peanut strain.

They harvest it early, when its "allergenicity" – ability to trigger a reaction – is low, and further reduce it in the baking process.

"We changed the peanut, not the patient," said Prof Kidron. “When you come in with a protein that you’ve changed, and now it’s not this big ball of something inside, but it’s very opened up, the cells of your immune system recognise: yes, this is a peanut. Stop reacting.”

The cookie becomes a medication, she said. "We already did this trial in which more than 30 children with very, very severe peanut allergy have eaten our cookies for 40 weeks, at the end of which at least 28 of the 32 of them are now eating peanuts ad-lib [ad-libitum – as many as they want]."

The cookies were designed to be child-friendly and easy to incorporate into daily life, without the side effects that sometimes come with traditional allergy treatments.

Peanut allergy rates in Israel are far lower than the UK – around 0.2 cer cent compared to 2 per cent – a direct result, many say, of the popularity of the Bamba peanut butter snack among young kids.

But the "safe peanut" cookies will still play an important role. Peanut-based anaphylactic shock is severe – swollen throat, breathing difficulties, a plunge in blood pressure and vomiting – and can, in rare cases, be fatal.

The proteins in peanuts that cause an allergic reaction are much tougher than those in may other food, milk or eggs, for example. They stay intact even during digestion and are resistant to heat (roasting them can actually make the problem worse).

The Mona Cookie trials suggest many allergic children can develop the ability to eat peanuts after the treatment, but it does not mean every child will be cured and it’s not yet widely available.

None of the children in the Sheba trial suffered any severe reactions, so the next step is to expand the trials to hundreds of children, testing the cookies against a placebo.