New York, June 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intrommune Therapeutics, a specialty biopharmaceutical company developing a patient-friendly platform for the treatment of food allergies, today announced the expansion of its Scientific Advisory Board. The new advisors, Dr. A. Wesley Burks, Dr. David Fleischer, and Dr. Matthew Greenhawt, together bring a wealth of experience studying food allergies and food allergy immunotherapy to the company. They join Senior Scientific Advisor and Intrommune Co-founder Dr. William Reisacher, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology at Weill Cornell Medicine and an otolaryngologist at New York-Presbyterian in New York City, on the company’s Scientific Advisory Board.
“We are pleased to welcome Dr. Burks, Dr. Fleischer, and Dr. Greenhawt to Intrommune’s Scientific Advisory Board,” said CEO Michael Nelson. “We highly value the knowledge and expertise these esteemed researchers bring to the company regarding allergy immunotherapy and patient care. Their input will strengthen Intrommune’s development program.”
Dr. A. Wesley Burks is Executive Dean for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, the Curnen Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, and Executive Director of the UNC Food Allergy Initiative. Dr. Burks joins the Intrommune Advisory Board with 30 years’ experience conducting and leading clinical research on clinical presentations of food allergy, the properties of foods contributing to allergenicity, and food allergy immunotherapy, including pioneering research on sublingual immunotherapy for peanut allergy.
Dr. David Fleischer is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Director of the Food Challenge Unit at Colorado Children’s Hospital, and board certified in both Allergy and Immunology and Pediatrics. He has led research sites for numerous multi-center studies, including NIH-NIAID funded CoFAR studies on peanut sublingual immunotherapy, egg oral immunotherapy, and the causes and progression of peanut allergies.
Dr. Matthew Greenhawt is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He brings expertise in health services research, healthcare policy, and biostatistics. He has published over 50 articles on topics including the impact of food allergies on quality of life, vaccine safety, and food allergy healthcare policy, in addition to funded research into phenotypes in eosinophilic esophagitis and cost-effectiveness analysis.
About Oral Mucosal Immunotherapy
Food allergies affect an estimated 15 million Americans, including 6 million children, and over 220 million people worldwide. Allergen-specific immunotherapy is the only treatment modality that targets the root cause of the disease, consistently exposing the allergy sufferer’s immune system to small amounts of allergen proteins to desensitize them to the allergens over time. There is currently no commercially-available allergy immunotherapy product for food allergies. Oral mucosal immunotherapy (OMIT) uses a specially formulated toothpaste to stabilize and deliver allergenic extracts to the areas of the oral cavity with the greatest potential for allergy desensitization. OMIT promises advantages over other approaches to allergy immunotherapy due to its targeted delivery, simplified administration, and ease of long-term patient adherence.
About Intrommune Therapeutics
Intrommune is developing the revolutionary oral mucosal immunotherapy (OMIT) treatment platform for food allergies. Intrommune’s lead product, INT-301, is expected to be a safe, effective and convenient therapy for patients who suffer from peanut allergy. OMIT is designed to deliver proteins, such as immunotherapeutic agents, to the immune system while the user brushes their teeth. OMIT is a long-term, patient-friendly, disease-modifying solution for the 220 million people, including 9 million adults and 6 million children in the U.S., who suffer from this life-altering condition.