New York, Feb. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
Allovate Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on improving treatment for allergies, announced today that the U.S Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted U.S. Patent No. 9,271,899 entitled, “Methods, Articles and Kits for Allergic Desensitization, via the Oral Mucosa.” The issuing patent including claims to the approach of combining allergenic proteins with toothpaste.
These claims provide patent protection for the oral mucosal immunotherapy (OMIT) platform. OMIT enables regular administration of allergy immunotherapy while a user brushes their teeth.
Allovate retains the global rights to develop products based on the OMIT platform for the treatment of respiratory allergies. Allovate is licensing the rights to develop the OMIT platform for the treatment of food allergies to Intrommune Therapeutics, which will focus initially on an FDA-approved treatment for peanut allergy. Food allergy is a potentially life-threatening condition for which there is currently no treatment available.
Dr. Erick Berglund, Co-Founder and CEO of Allovate Therapeutics, said, “The issuance of this key patent validates the novelty of the OMIT platform and enables us to accelerate the development of new options for allergy sufferers. The claims of the new patent significantly enhance the commercial viability of Allovate Therapeutics, which in turn sets the stage for future research and development.”
About Oral Mucosal Immunotherapy (OMIT)
Respiratory allergies affect at least 60 million people in the United States, resulting in 11.1 million visits to the doctor in 2010. Symptomatic treatment, at a global cost of over $25 billion yearly, keeps symptoms at bay temporarily but does not offer a long-term solution. Allergen-specific immunotherapy is the only treatment method that targets the root cause of the disease. Immunotherapy has traditionally been administered by injecting allergens into the skin (subcutaneous immunotherapy) or placing them under the tongue (sublingual immunotherapy). Oral mucosal immunotherapy (OMIT) uses a proprietary, specially formulated toothpaste to incorporate and stabilize allergenic proteins that are administered while a user brushes their teeth, delivering key agents to the areas of the oral cavity with the highest density of the immune cells responsible for initiating desensitization. OMIT simplifies long-term daily adherence to immunotherapy for patients, offering a potential solution to the “crisis of compliance” in allergy immunotherapy.
About Allovate Therapeutics
Allovate Therapeutics is a New York City-based specialty biopharmaceutical company founded in 2012 to improve allergy treatment for all patients. Allovate’s aim is to provide safe, effective, and convenient new options for allergy sufferers that deliver demonstrable improvements to therapeutic adherence and clinical outcomes over existing allergy treatment protocols. Allovate’s lead product, Allerdent®, is designed to deliver proteins, such as immunotherapeutic agents, to the immune system while the user brushes their teeth.