A Frenco-Canadian pharmaceutical company called Angany, based in Québec city, Canada, has been cleared to conduct human trials on a cat allergy vaccine in the UK. The vaccine is called ANG-101. They say that it is a “First in human, open-label and single site evaluation of the safety, allergenicity and immunogenicity of the new vaccine in adult patients allergic to cat dander”. In short, it’s a trial on humans to see whether this cat allergy vaccine is effective and safe.
It’s been conducted under the guidance of Prof Steven Durham and Dr. Guy Scadding both of whom are leading clinical allergy experts from Imperial College London.
They say that there is currently no cure for the cat allergy. Purina make a cat food which is moderately effective which tackles the cat allergy problem by coating the allergen to make it less effective in creating allergic symptoms.
You might say that it is the Holy Grail of the scientific community in respect of the domestic cat to find a way to protect people who are allergic to the Fel D1 cat allergen. Around 10% to 20% of the human population are allergic to cats which represents many millions of people, many of whom would like to live with a domestic cat.
The press release on this cat vaccine trial states that there are over-the-counter or prescription medications to relieve symptoms but they don’t prevent the allergy from progressing.
Current disease-modifying treatments against the allergy desensitises the person; a form of allergen immunotherapy which takes years of cat allergen administration. It has a poor success rate.
The vaccine being trialled is “a therapeutic vaccine that provides a disruptive disease-modifying approach for the treatment of cat allergy.”
As I understand it, what they’ve done is to take a bioparticle which the human body detects as a virus. And they’ve covered that fake virus (my terminology) with ‘thousands of copies of cat major allergen Fel D1’.
That fake viruses is injected into people as the vaccine causing the human body’s immune system to create antibodies against it. This in effect creates antibodies against the cat allergen thereby protecting the person against Fel D1. As I said, that’s my understanding. I’ve reduced their words into a simpler language.
We are very pleased that our new and promising approach to cat allergy immunotherapy is now being tested in patients, in a study that constitutes the first step of a comprehensive clinical development program. We have named this clinical study “HOPE” as this important milestone in Angany’s vaccine development program should raise new hope for millions of people affected by allergy worldwide. ANG-101 is a first from a vaccine portfolio in development that aims to cover major allergies in humans and companion animals.
Dr Louis-Philippe Vézina, President and CEO of Angany and a successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur, world-renowned for his expertise in the design and production of new generations of vaccines
Comment: it is a sad twist of fate which has given the domestic cat this allergen which affects so many people and which interferes with the human-to-cat relationship substantially. It’s a barrier to adopting a domestic cat. There are others such as the fact that the domestic cat is a perfect predator!
If the vaccine works well enough to pass the trials, I can envisage, in an ideal world, a lot more cat adoptions and hopefully many of them will be from animal shelters. Arguably, the vaccine could save the lives of shelter cats but perhaps I’m being overly optimistic because if there are more people who can adopt a domestic cat you inevitably end up with more domestic cats to be adopted!
