To further evaluate immune responses generated by the consumption of pea and bean seed meals, we did an in vivo respiratory tract challenge with aAI to assess whether T cell priming occurred. To measure in vivo T cell immune responses, we instilled aAI into the nares of mice following 4 consecutive weeks of bean and pea feeding and measured leucocyte infiltration and mucus hypersecretion in lungs. Feeding beans and peas, whether raw or heat-treated, followed by i.n. aAI induced airway and lung inflammation, while gavage with PBS did not induce inflammation . Similarly, all mice fed seed meal developed high levels of mucus secretion following i.n. aAI compared with PBS controls . Consumption of Pinto and Tendergreen bean seed meals led to the highest number of 934369-14-9 eosinophils in the airway with increased eosinophil recruitment in heat-treated compared to raw seed meal fed mice . In contrast, mice consuming raw transgenic peas had higher airway eosinophils compared to heat-treated peas. Tendergreen bean fed mice generated more extensive allergic lung inflammation than all the other seed meals . Both transgenic aAI and non-transgenic peas generated a severe inflammatory response in lung compared to Pinto bean, transgenic and nGM- cowpeas and chickpeas. We did not expect the responses to be higher in mice consuming heat-treated seed meals due to the denaturation of the proteins. However, we observed that some groups had higher eosinophilia in heat-treated compared to raw seed meals. We speculate that there are other components in the seeds that may affect the overall immune response to the seed meals and that these are influenced differentially 62284-79-1 during heat treatment. Although adjuvant studies are not routinely used in the assessment of GMOs, the effect of aAI peas on a non-crossreactive protein, OVA was previously tested and shown to enhance OVAspecific immunogenicity . To test the effect of aAI pea feeding on immune responses to OVA, we used a different approach in models of OVA-induced allergic disease. We fed mice with seed meals during OVA sensitization and lung challenge for the onset of allergic disease or fed mice before re-challenging with aerosolized OVA to induce disease exacerbation . OVA immun
