07 mars 2023
French teams have developed a vaccine that could lead to long-term protection against allergic asthma.
Inflammation of the bronchi, difficulty breathing… Allergic asthma represents half of the cases of asthma. Caused by the inhalation of allergens, most often dust mites, it results from an overproduction of antibodies called immunoglobulin E (IgE) and proteins called “type 2 cytokines” (in particular the interleukins IL-4 and IL -13) in the airways. Thus leading to a cascade of reactions leading to hyperreactivity of the respiratory tract.
Currently, inhaled corticosteroids are the gold standard for controlling asthma. However, in the case of severe allergic asthma, this treatment is not always sufficient and the use of expensive treatments must be considered.
Effectiveness of 3 months
For several years, French researchers* have been working on the development of sustainable immunization at a lower cost. If they have already shown the effectiveness of a vaccine in an animal model, these scientists have just taken the next step. To know how to test their technique on a human model. How ? By using a model of allergic asthma to house dust mites in “humanized” mice (the murine genes leading to the production of IL-4 and IL-13 have been replaced by human genes, editor’s note).
And the results are encouraging: the teams showed that this vaccine was effective in producing antibodies capable of neutralizing the cytokines IL-4 and IL-13, “without diminishing the effectiveness of the vaccine, up to more than three months after the injection ».
In the animals studied, vaccination was thus associated with a reduction in the production of mucus and hyperreactivity of the respiratory tract.
« Vaccination against allergic asthma offers hope for long-term treatment of this chronic disease », points out Pierre Bruhns, head of the Antibodies in Therapy and Pathology unit at the Institut Pasteur. “But also a prospect of reducing allergy symptoms linked to other factors, since this vaccine targets molecules involved in different allergies. »
*Inserm, CNRS, Toulouse III-Paul Sabatier University (within the Infinity laboratory), Institut Pasteur and the French company NEOVACS