Mechanisms underlying food allergy are not well understood. Mass cytometry is a technique that allows the multiple analysis of cell surface markers and intracellular proteins by using the spectrum of rare metal isotopes of different atomic masses without channel overlap. Bioinformatic approaches are implemented to combine and reduce the information of more than 60 parameters to define immune cell subpopulations. To date, mass cytometry has revealed a great heterogeneity in human response to food antigens and that subpopulations of basophils and mononuclear cells might be mechanistically implicated in food allergy. This chapter reviews some fundamentals of mass cytometry and the contributions of this technique in elucidating the immune basis of food allergy, oral tolerance, food desensitization, phenotypes, and the cellular events occurring upon allergen-specific immunotherapy.
Keywords: Cell populations; Cytometry by time of flight; Food allergy; Immunophenotype; Mass cytometry.
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