Allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) is a common T cell mediated
skin disease. Small reactive organic molecules called
haptens induce ACD.
Haptens are not recognized by themselves, but need to bond to endogenous proteins in the
skin, and processed further into complete antigens. Antigen specific T cells then recognize the resulting antigen. Although the
haptens are well known, the chemical reactions of
haptens inducing ACD is not well known. Neither are the chemical structures of the complete antigens associated with ACD in humans. This study is composed of three parts. Reactivity study of strong sensitizers like 2,4-dinitrofluorobenzene (DNFB), 1,4-benzoquinone (BQ), 4-t-butyl-1,2-benzoquinone (tBuBQ) and cis-1,2-hexahydrophthalic-anhydride (HHPA) under physiologic conditions with nucleophilic amino acids and peptides by analytical methods (HPLC, LC/MS/MS). The new reaction products were isolated and their structures were determined by NMR and MS. We found that most
haptens reacted predominantly ...