2024/01/11
Kyushu University
Keio University
Highlights
Allergies, including hay fever, are a national health concern. While allergen immunotherapy, such as sublingual immunotherapy, is widely used as a curative treatment, it has a high incidence of side effects like swelling and itching in the mouth and throat. Furthermore, the need for daily medication over several years leads many patients to discontinue treatment. It may also not be suitable for patients with severe conditions.
We have successfully developed an orally administered nanoparticle formulation. It is highly safe with a low risk of side effects, and its high absorption efficiency allows it to induce immune tolerance more rapidly, resulting in greater therapeutic efficiency and effectiveness.
Its high safety profile makes it potentially applicable not only to patients with severe conditions, for whom treatment has been challenging, but also to infants and young children. It has the potential to become a therapeutic drug that can halt the "allergic march"—the tendency to develop a series of different allergies—at an early stage.
Allergies, including hay fever, have become a national health issue. Currently, allergen immunotherapy, such as sublingual immunotherapy, is widely used as a curative treatment. However, there is a high incidence of side effects like swelling and itching in the mouth and throat, and the requirement for daily medication over several years leads many patients to discontinue treatment. Furthermore, it may not be applicable to patients with severe conditions such as bronchial asthma or atopic dermatitis.
We have now successfully developed an orally administered nanoparticle formulation that is highly safe with a low risk of side effects, and also highly effective and efficient.
A research group, including Associate Professor Takeshi Mori, Professor Yoshiki Katayama, and Dr. Suni Lee from the Faculty of Engineering at Kyushu University; Lecturer Daisuke Murakami from the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at Kyushu University Hospital; Professor Koji Hasegawa from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Keio University; and Hiroki Toriumi, a second-year master's student at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Keio University, has developed a mass-producible method for creating nanoparticles where allergen proteins are coated with mannan extracted from yeast cell walls. When these particles were orally administered to allergic model mice, they demonstrated high therapeutic efficacy without inducing an anaphylactic response, unlike the conventional method of using the allergen protein directly. The mannan coating prevents the allergen from reacting with antibodies, ensuring high safety. Furthermore, the study revealed that mannan delivers the allergen to dendritic cells and induces a tolerogenic state in them, efficiently promoting the generation of regulatory T cells.
Thanks to its high therapeutic efficiency and effectiveness, a shorter treatment period is anticipated. Its high safety profile also makes it potentially applicable not only to patients with severe conditions, for whom treatment has been challenging, but also to infants and young children. It is also expected to become a therapeutic drug that could halt the "allergic march"—the tendency to develop a series of different allergies—at an early stage.
The results of this research were published in the American journal "Biomaterials" on November 5, 2023 (local time).
For the full press release, please see below.