EPO grants Allergy Thera MPL+Tyr patent

Allergy Therapeutics, a UK-based specialist pharmaceutical company focused on allergy vaccination, has been granted a broad technology patent for the combination of MPL with tyrosine and an antigen by the European Patent Office, covering 24 countries in Europe.

According to the firm, the patent is important because it covers vaccine therapy for any bacterial or viral disease and uses an antigen derived from the target organism. Therefore the advanced MPL + tyrosine adjuvant combination, which the company already uses in its therapeutic allergy vaccines, may be employed in the anti-infective field, as a prophylactic or preventative vaccine. The patent also covers the use of the adjuvant system in cancer, bacterial and viral immunotherapy.

Although Allergy Therapeutics is focused primarily on the development on allergy vaccine products, at the same time its intellectual property platform has potential applications in the very large anti-infective vaccine market, which is estimated at $5.0-11.0 billion in 2006 and growing.