Allergen immunotherapy (AIT) is the only curative treatment for allergic diseases. However, AIT has many disadvantages related to efficiency, safety, long-term duration, and patient compliance. Dendritic cells (DCs) have an important role in
antigen-specific tolerance induction; thus, DC-targeting strategies to treat
allergies such as
glutaraldehyde crosslinked
antigen to mannoprotein (MAN) have been established. However,
glutaraldehyde crosslinking may reduce the antigen presentation efficiency of DCs. To overcome this, we developed a MAN-coated
ovalbumin (OVA) nanoparticle (MDO), which uses intermolecular
disulfide bond to crosslink OVA and MAN. MDO effectively targeted DCs resulting in tolerogenic DCs, and promoted higher antigen presentation efficiency by DCs compared with OVA or
glutaraldehyde crosslinked nanoparticles. In vitro and in vivo experiments showed that DCs exposed to MDO induced Treg cells. Moreover, MDO had low reactivity with anti-OVA
antibodies and did not induce
anaphylaxis in allergic mice, demonstrating its high safety profile. In a mouse model of allergic
asthma, MDO had significant preventative and
therapeutic effects when administered orally or subcutaneously. Therefore, MDO represents a promising new approach for the efficient and safe treatment of
allergies.