Allergy Therapeutics’ Peanut Allergy Vaccine Enters Next Stage

Allergy Therapeutics, a biotechnology company specializing in allergy immunotherapies, announced that its VLP Peanut Vaccine Phase I/IIa PROTECT trial has entered the final phase of treatment. Healthy volunteers are progressing to the highest dose levels, and no safety signals have been observed to date.

As part of the next phase, the final cohort of healthy volunteers will now receive subcutaneous doses of VLP Peanut — the company’s innovative, short-course peanut allergy vaccine candidate — beyond the expected therapeutic dose level to establish a strong safety margin. Meanwhile, the third of four planned cohorts of peanut-allergic patients is progressing through dose escalation, also including levels beyond the anticipated therapeutic range. These data will supplement previously reported biomarker efficacy findings observed at lower cumulative doses, strengthening the understanding of treatment response at higher doses.

How the vaccine works

“This vaccine is a cucumber mosaic vaccine that is bound to Ara h 2, which is the potent allergen in peanut,” Roxanne C. Oriel, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics, Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Healio.

Cucumber Mosaic Virus (CuMV) is a virus that affects plants. It is generally accepted that plant viruses do not cause disease in humans or animals.

In the VLP Peanut vaccine, the Ara h 2 peanut protein is genetically fused to the surface of virus-like particles derived from CuMV. When the immune system encounters the vaccine, it processes it as a harmless virus rather than an allergen, thus bypassing the reactions associated with peanut allergies. This alternative method of introducing the protein to the immune system triggers protective immunological changes that are expected to coax the body to “unlearn” the allergy.

If VLP Peanut proves effective, the mechanism can be used to treat other food and environmental allergies.