Allergens

The CAST® allergens from BÜHLMANN are intended for in vitro leukocyte stimulation
in the Flow CAST® and CAST® ELISA kits.

Alpha Laboratories offers the broad range of quality controlled allergens and mixes from BÜHLMANN.
These are standardized and validated for the use in the cellular allergy assays.

The full list includes, amongst others:
Adjuvants , Analgesics, Antibiotics, Antiseptics, Environmental and Occupational, Inhalants, Insect Venoms, Food, Food Additives, Myorelaxants, Mites, Animals and Insects,

Applications

Drugs
There have been multicentre studies on beta-Lactam antibiotics and NSAIDs performed and from these the European Network for Drug Allergy (ENDA) concluded that using the CAST® assays significantly reduces the need for potentially dangerous and costly drug provocation tests. It was also found that the CAST® assays are superior to sIgE determinations.
Bee/Wasp
The CAST® assays have 91% sensitivity and 95% specificity in Bee/Wasp testing. This means that it is possible to identify the actual culprit insect and support the clinical diagnosis in patients with ambiguous clinical history, skin tests or controversial sIgE. Recent studies show that the Flow CAST® is a very useful test for detecting double positivity due to CCD and is a promising tool to follow up specific immunotherapy (SIT).
Food
The CAST® assays are powerful tools for the discrimination and identification of cross reactivity between clinically relevant and irrelevant IgE. Recent studies confirm the BAT as a useful tool in the in vitro diagnosis of cow’s milk allergy due to its better sensitivity (91%) and specificity (90%) than sIgE (67% for both).
Food Additives
The diagnosis of food additive allergies is known to be very difficult as non immunological reactions are usually assumed to be the primary cause for the patients’ symptoms. The CAST® assays are the only assays available that can measure these allergies by the in vitro reaction.

Safer Identity of Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) Allergy

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is used as a stabiliser of lipid nanoparticles in the formulation of mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines. Allergy to PEG is rare but can be severe. It is suspected to be the primary cause of allergic reactions in those individuals who have reacted adversely to the vaccine and is thus increasingly recognised.

Basophil activation testing (BAT) has been validated to support and investigate PEG hypersensitivity reactions. Alpha Laboratories is therefore pleased to be able to offer the new Polyethylene glycol allergens from BÜHLMANN. These are to be used alongside the FlowCAST® basophil activation assay, providing a safer approach to determine those with a hypersensitivity reaction to PEG.

PEGs at different molecular weights may result in different reactivity of patient basophils, so BÜHLMANN has produced several PEG allergens to maximise the chance of detecting an allergic response in a patient: