Asthma vaccine breakthrough Paves ways for clinical trials

Asthma allergies, general conditions in which a person experiences asthma symptoms after exposure to allergens such as dust mites, has an impact on hundreds of millions of people worldwide. In the most severe case, this disease can have a big impact on one’s life and even turn off if the asthma attack occurs far from one’s emergency inhaler. The new vaccine breakthrough can finally change it.

Light asthma can be treated with emergency inhalers and lifestyle changes, while more severe asthma is usually treated using corticosteroidal inhalers. However, for those extreme from the scale of asthma severity, even corticosteroid inhalers may not be enough, which is an expensive place of monoclonal antibodies. This treatment requires a long-term injection, and many people struggle to buy it.

The asthma vaccine will revolutionize things for people who suffer from asthma, but someone does not yet exist. It can change because of research from the Pasteur Institute and other French institutions, which have published a study of the conjugate vaccine used in animal models.

This vaccine involves CRM197 carrier protein, which is commonly used in conjugate vaccines, coupled with cytokines IL-4 and recombinant IL-13, which are produced in the airways after exposure to allergens, triggering asthma symptoms.

The animals provided by this vaccine were found to have ‘sustainable antibody production’ which directly targeted the IL-4 and IL-13 cytokines, with 90 percent of the tested mice reaching this high level of antibodies after six weeks. Sixty percent of mice maintain adequate antibodies to neutralize the cytokine a full year later.

Vaccinated mice decreased things such as mucus production and other symptoms as well. There are no side effects recorded in vaccinated animals. Although this does not mean we will see the asthma vaccine for humans in the near future, it does pave the way for the clinical trial, bring humanity one step closer to a potential vaccine for this disease.