Allergens:
symptom:
Issue
Allergies have become a severe global health crisis, affecting 30-40% of the global population with conditions like asthma, rhinitis, and food allergies. They cause debilitating symptoms and life-threatening anaphylaxis, stemming from an immune system overreaction to allergens like dust mites, pollen, and seafood. This malfunction poses a significant public health burden, particularly in regions such as Guangdong, where high sensitization rates are prevalent.
Current Solution
Traditional treatments involve environmental control and symptomatic drug use (antihistamines, glucocorticoids), which are often impractical and offer only temporary relief.
Allergen Immunotherapy (AIT) is the sole treatment altering the disease course by inducing immune tolerance. However, AIT faces limitations like long duration, potential for severe reactions, complexity in multi-allergy cases, and high costs, necessitating professional supervision.
Our Solution
Our integrated strategy aims to overcome AIT's limitations by enhancing safety, efficacy, and compliance. It involves rationally designing hypoallergens to reduce IgE reactivity, creating fusion proteins for broad-spectrum desensitization against multiple allergens, and employing a microneedle-based delivery system for painless, sustained, and user-friendly administration, ultimately improving treatment accessibility and long-term effectiveness.
Redesigning hypoallergens
Conventional AIT uses natural allergen extracts with high IgE-binding risk. We engineered recombinant hypoallergens from common allergens (Phl p1, Bet v1, Der p1, Der p2, Met e1, Cyp c1) by mutating conformational IgE epitopes while preserving T-cell epitopes. This retains immunogenicity for tolerance induction but drastically reduces hypersensitivity risk. These designed antigens can also induce IgG-blocking antibodies to compete with IgE, enhancing safety.
Fusion Allergens
To address multi-allergy sensitization and simplify treatment, we fused hypoallergenic proteins from similar allergic phenomena into a single construct. This aims for broad-spectrum therapeutic effects, eliminating the need for multiple injections. Incorporation of a self-assembling peptide (EFK8) promotes protein oligomerization, extending the product's half-life in the body and reducing administration frequency, thereby improving patient compliance.
Microneedle
We integrated microneedle technology for painless, minimally invasive delivery of our fusion hypoallergenic protein formulation. This method enhances administration convenience, reduces patient fear and discomfort associated with injections, and improves long-term treatment compliance. The microneedle platform also facilitates efficient and sustained delivery, contributing to a safer, more comfortable, and effective long-term management strategy for allergy sufferers.
