Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Monoclonal antibody improves cat allergen immunotherapy

Approach tested in NIH trial expected to work similarly for other allergens.

An experimental approach to enhancing a standard cat allergy treatment made it more effective and faster acting, and the benefits persisted for a year after treatment ended, a study supported by the National Institutes of Health has found. The findings were published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Allergen immunotherapy, often called allergy shots, is a long-term treatment that decreases allergy symptoms for people with conditions such as allergic rhinitis or allergic asthma by reducing their sensitivity to allergens. Achieving persistent symptom relief requires at least three years of allergy shots, however, and does not work for everyone.

“People with chronic allergy symptoms may suffer from reduced productivity and quality of life,” said Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of NIH. “Developing allergen immunotherapy regimens that work better and more quickly than those currently available would provide much-needed relief for many people.”

To that end, NIAID-supported investigators tested whether giving a monoclonal antibody called tezepelumab plus cat allergy shots to people with allergic rhinitis caused by cat allergens would safely provide better and faster long-lasting symptom relief than allergy shots alone. Allergic rhinitis involves inflammation of the nasal membranes and causes symptoms such as sneezing, runny nose, stuffy nose, watery eyes, problems with smell, and an itchy nose, mouth, or eyes.

The Phase 1/2 clinical trial, called CATNIP, was led by Jonathan Corren, M.D., and conducted by the NIAID-funded Immune Tolerance Network. Dr. Corren is an associate clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles. Tezepelumab was donated for the trial by Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, California and AstraZeneca of Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Tezepelumab blocks a protein called thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), a type of cell-signaling molecule, or cytokine, called an alarmin. Cells that cover the surface of organs like the skin and intestines or that line the inside of the nose and lungs rapidly secrete TSLP in response to signals of potential danger. In allergic disease, TSLP helps initiate an overreactive immune response to otherwise harmless substances like cat dander, provoking airway inflammation that leads to the symptoms of allergic rhinitis.

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https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/monoclonal-antibody-improves-cat-allergen-immunotherapy