Allergy Therapeutics examines potential of adjuvant portfolio

Allergy Therapeutics will look into potential wider applications for its adjuvant technology after recent clinical research produced encouraging indications about both allergy vaccination and infectious disease applications.

Microcrystalline tyrosine (MCT), an aluminium-free depot adjuvant used in Allergy Therapeutics' approved hayfever vaccine Pollinex Quattro, has been shown to produce strong results in a preclinical model and has demonstrated increased protective efficacy compared to existing adjuvants on the market.

Furthermore, when MCT was coupled with virus-like-particles (VLP) to create a unique new system dubbed AdSys-VcT it appeared to produce a significant increase in specific antibodies and other immune parameters, which indicate it would offer protective efficacy compared to aluminium salts, a common inorganic adjuvant.

"The potential for this novel adjuvant system in infectious disease applications was concluded to be highly significant," the company said.

The company's wholly owned Bencard Adjuvant Systems (BAS) has signed an agreement with Swiss-based vaccines company Saiba to develop new applications of AdSys-VcT for use in prophylactic vaccination and food allergy immunotherapy.

"It is exciting to announce that our portfolio of adjuvants can be combined to create adjuvant systems that deliver optimised immunotherapy in both allergy indications and infectious disease applications," said chief executive Manuel Llobet.

"Our strategy for growth with BAS focuses on extending the use of MCT with novel adjuvants to create novel adjuvant systems capable of increasing the effectiveness of new and existing vaccines with unmet needs, and or new and emerging infectious diseases that require an effective adjuvant system like AdSys-VcT."

Shares in AGY rose almost 10% to 21.77p by mid-afternoon on Monday, but were still short of levels in June.