In Australia, approximately 3 in 100 infants suffer from peanut allergies. While research shows that by age six, about 30% of children outgrow their peanut allergy, it’s still one of the common food allergies affecting adults.
Currently, there is no cure for food allergies. The only way to prevent an allergic reaction is to strictly avoid the food a person is allergic to.
Now, a potentially groundbreaking medication that promises to block one’s allergic responses upon exposure to allergens like peanuts is recruiting participants at Monash Health, Fiona Stanley Hospital, St Vincent’s Hospital, and The Royal Melbourne Hospital.
The upcoming Phase 1 trial will evaluate the medication known as IGNX001’s safety and tolerability through a placebo-controlled, randomised, double-blind study in peanut-allergic individuals.
Head of Adult Allergy/Immunology Associate Professor Sara Barnes explains that this is part of a multinational study where patients will go under a blinded placebo challenge to a peanut and a non-peanut product to induce an allergic reaction. They will then be offered the medication and, later, offered the same food item to see if they are still reacting to the peanut product.
‘We’re really optimistic about how this medication will work as there is another very similar product on the market, which has been shown to decrease systemic allergic reactions.
‘We know that people with food allergies and their families have a significant rate of anxiety just by the presence of the food allergy,’ A/Prof Barnes.
While the trial could potentially change the allergy landscape, she says recruiting participants has been challenging. Here, A/Prof Barnes explains balancing running the clinical trial within a controlled risk environment and the potential benefits it can bring to the many thousands of allergy sufferers.
‘Ethics has been quite a big hurdle. We are deliberately inducing anaphylaxis in people. And we’re doing it with people from 15 and above. But we do need to do that to show that the product works. So, that is quite a complex ethics process, but we’ve worked with Monash University and our international partners to get through on what a reasonable rounding of risk for the patient is and do something that will protect them in the future.
‘We do have people ringing up wanting to be part of this study because they don’t want to have these lifelong risks, but there is a risk just by doing this study because we can induce anaphylaxis.
‘So that has been a really hard, long journey,’ she says.
And the journey has been one that is worth the challenges as Clinical Nurse Consultant in Allergy/Immunology Elizabeth Leahy explains that by the end of the trial, they are hoping they can offer a solution to not just peanut allergy but other food allergies as well.
‘We have patients who restrict their diets, restrict where they can travel; it has a significant impact on the whole family.
‘So we’re hoping that we can really, in the future, offer this to them and change their lives,’ she says.
The trial will be run over three months and is open to participants aged 15 to 55 with a clinically diagnosed history of peanut allergy.
Learn more about Phase 1 of the IgGenix trial here.