Allergy Therapeutics, the specialist pharmaceutical company focused on allergy vaccination, has announced that The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a broad technology patent relating to the company’s family of MPL-based sublingual allergy vaccines. This patent (jointly held with Corixa Inc) covers the use of glycolipid adjuvant administered sublingually with one or more antigens, for use in the treatment of allergy or other diseases (infections, cancer or autoimmunity).

The patent has already been granted in Europe and Japan.

Allergy Therapeutics’ new generation of allergy vaccines use MPL, an innovative TLR4-agonist, as an adjuvant to boost and accelerate the immune response of an allergy vaccine.  Allergy Therapeutics has already conducted and previously published results of a double-blind, placebo controlled, dose ranging phase IIa ‘Proof of Concept’ MPL-based oral allergy vaccine study. The study was conducted in 80 grass-sensitive human subjects and involved the addition of MPL to Allergy Therapeutics’ ORALVAC grass pollen vaccine. The results demonstrated that MPL could convey the same benefits in a sublingual vaccine as it does in a subcutaneous vaccine, namely stimulating and re-directing the immune response to give clinical benefit from a shortened course of treatment.

The development of a convenient, effective, short course, well tolerated oral allergy vaccine would have significant implications for allergy therapy and redefine the market for allergy products. Currently available oral allergy vaccines require prolonged treatment periods which may limit their usefulness. Allergy Therapeutics believes a short course sublingual allergy vaccine has significant potential to capture market share from the oral segment of the allergy vaccine market. The Company will require a partner to advance this opportunity.

Commenting on the granting of the patent, Manuel Llobet, Chief Executive of Allergy Therapeutics, said, “An adjuvanted oral vaccine for Allergy could have the potential to reduce significantly the length of current oral allergy vaccine treatments and bring a breakthrough product to the oral allergy vaccine segment, as we saw with Pollinex Quattro in the subcutaneous market.”