Angany
Novel Immunotherapy Brings Hope to Allergy

There is currently no cure for allergies. Over-the-counter and prescription medications relieve patients of symptoms, but don’t prevent allergy from progressing.

The only disease-modifying treatment against allergy is desensitization, a form of allergen immunotherapy (AIT). Patients receive allergy shots in the form of weekly then monthly injections or daily sublingual tablets or drops. Aluminum salt-based adjuvants are used for subcutaneous administration. But the treatment needs to continue for 3 to 5 years for sustained efficacy, and throughout the course of the treatment, side effects like throat swelling, wheezing, and chest tightness are common.

For leading Franco-Canadian biotech company ANGANY, it all started with allergy. It has found a novel way to overcome the drawbacks of these existing allergy treatments.

Leveraging 30 years of R&D in biotechnology, immunology, and vaccinology, ANGANY has developed a biosynthetic allergen-lipid ultrastructure, called an eBioparticle™, which effectively turns natural allergens into larger 3D structures that resemble viruses.

eBioparticles mimic viral pathogens in shape, dimension, and surface antigenic motif. They resemble the complex molecular structure of a virus, but do not contain any of its infectious genetic material or viral immunogenic components. When introduced to a host body, their immune system immediately recognizes the 3D structure of what seems to be a virus and triggers a strong allergen-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG)-based immune response. Compared to natural allergens, eBioparticles bearing allergens are 1,000 times more immunogenic and several hundred times less allergenic. This allergen eBioparticle-potentiated immunization can suppress hypersensitivity while creating a lasting protective response in susceptible individuals.

“We re-balance the immune response from an allergy-typical Th2 type of immune response to a Th1 type of immune response. The Th1 response is more antibacterial, antiviral, and anticancer in nature. It opens the door to deliver disease-modifying treatment for allergies through biologics of a new generation delivered as vaccines, without the use of adjuvants,” says Guy Tropper, co-founder and executive VP at ANGANY.

Safety: Addressing Patient’s Top of Mind Concern

Desensitization, in one form or another, has been the only disease-modifying treatment for allergy for the past one hundred years. Safety and the fear of causing uncontrolled allergic reaction have always been central concerns in allergy and allergy immunotherapy. This is clearly an issue in oral immunotherapy (OIT) for food allergies. Angany’s eBioparticle™ carries a formidable load of allergens. Yet, these allergens cannot, for steric reasons, interact with enough basophils and mastocytes to trigger a sudden allergic cascade. This brings an altogether new realm of safety in allergy therapeutics.

And just as momentous, is the eBioparticle™ platform’s ability to induce a potent IgG response against the target allergens, achieving in 1 or 2 injections what has until now required months of administration of the soluble form of these allergens or antigens.

An Opportunity to Cure Allergies in Children

Scientific findings suggest there may be a widow of opportunity to intervene with cure in mind for many children where the allergy dynamic is not yet fully established. Some select groups of at-risk children could also be targeted for prophylactic applications of ANGANY’s new generation biologics. Early intervention may be pivotal for food allergy sufferers. The potential for this new form of allergy immunotherapy to re-align

patients’ allergy dynamics, particularly in children, may well be ANGANY’s best shot at reversing the epidemiology of allergy and the past decades of ever worsening statistics.

Biologics of a New Generation from Platform Technology

ANGANY’s high-quality allergen eBioparticles were developed to overcome the challenge of allergy. Yet, in 2021 a Proof-of-concept (POC) experiment clearly showed the capability of the eBioparticle™ platform to generate a potent immune response against even self-protein targets, in that specific case a cytokine. This POC also showed the thousands of copies of the cytokine in question present on the surface of bioparticles to be biologically inactive. They are not toxic as the soluble form could be. Moreover, the eBioparticle vector itself is immunologically neutral, that is, it does not generate an immune response against the “carrier” itself.

These findings open the door to new applications in many domains where for so long a capable immunomodulatory vector has been searched for to potentiate a wide variety of biologic targets. In just a few weeks, ANGANY’s R&D team can leverage metagenomics, protein engineering and in silico design to produce POC material. So flexible is this platform that personalized patient-specific cancer therapeutics are currently being explored.

The past two decades have seen monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) bring tremendous advances in oncology and myriad other disease conditions. Yet, for all their benefits mAbs are costly to produce, with individual doses often measured in hundreds of milligrams. Production and cost considerations do matter in applications destined to millions of people. MAbs also require frequent administration (usually every 3 to 4 weeks) and may trigger allergic reactions. They are a form of “passive” immunotherapy. In contrast, ANGANY’s approach is one of “active” immunotherapy where the host’s immune system is driven to produce its own antibodies.

At this point, it seems to be possible for the desired immune response to be sustained for several months, thus allowing for a vaccinal schedule of administration. ANGANY’s new generation biologics are designed as “therapeutic vaccines.”

A proprietary cGMP Plant-Based Bioproduction Platform

ANGANY’s high-quality allergen eBioparticles are produced using its flexible, easily scalable, and economically competitive third-generation plant-based bioproduction platform. Its Lévis, QC-based cGMP pilot production unit can generate from one meter-square of plant culture in five days the equivalent of 5,000 doses of vaccine in six days! Particularly in the field of allergy where over one billion people worldwide are affected, the capability of delivering treatment that is not only safe and effective but also accessible is critical.

Allergy and Beyond

ANGANY’s initial product candidates are vaccines against cat and peanut allergies. The human allergy to cat candidate therapeutic is scheduled to start clinical development at Imperial College, London in early 2023. For the peanut allergy therapeutic, a preclinical assessment is underway at Massachusetts General Hospital. Since these therapeutics are based on short vaccinal protocols, their clinical development should be of far shorter duration than that of any other desensitization products.

Partnering with veterinary pharmaceutical Nextmune of the Vimian Group, ANGANY is working on therapeutic solutions based on its eBioparticle™ what has the appearance of a virus for applications in companion animal dermatology.

Several human and veterinary applications are also in early stages of development for domains such as, cancer, degenerative diseases, and endocrine conditions.

ANGANY is a Swahili word that roughly translates to ‘the sky is the limit.’ The company wants to bring to clinical reality a new form of immunotherapy, uncovering the deeper meaning behind its powerful brand name. ANGANY’s pharmaceutical development program raises new hope for the millions affected by allergies and a host of immune-mediated conditions worldwide.