An experimental skin patch for toddlers with peanut allergies helped ease reactions in a late-stage clinical trial that appears to offer positive results for a much-needed product long in development.
About 67% of kids from the ages of 1 to 3 who wore the patch, called Viaskin, for a year were able to safely ingest more peanut protein than when the trial began, according to the findings from drugmaker DBV Technologies SA published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The results are “very good news for toddlers and their families as the next step toward a future with more treatments for food allergies,” Alkis Togias, chief of the Allergy, Asthma, and Airway Biology Branch at the US National Institutes of Health, wrote in an accompanying editorial.
Peanut allergies affect about 1 million children in the US, there’s no approved treatment for those younger than the age of 4, and only 1 in 5 kids will outgrow the condition, according to estimates. The standard approach for managing the allergy has long been trying to avoid peanut-based products, but accidental exposures often occur in schools, during playdates and in other settings where food and children abound.
The trial included 362 toddlers from eight countries, with 244 randomly assigned to wear the Viaskin patch between their shoulder blades. Anaphylaxis, a serious allergic reaction that typically includes difficulty breathing, occurred in about 7.8% of patients who wore the patch; four of those reactions were deemed to have been related to treatment.
Paris-traded shares of DBV rose 9.8%.
Successful treatments for peanut allergies have evaded pharma for years. The latest results are a bright spot for DBV after earlier trial failures erased about half of its market value in 2017, leaving investors questioning the patch’s future.
“Parents and caregivers are eagerly awaiting FDA-approved treatment options for this age group,” Chief Executive Officer Daniel Tassé said in a statement.
US regulators approved Nestlé SA’s Palforzia in 2020 to help ease allergic reactions to peanuts in patients ages 4 to 17, but the drug proved to be a costly bet for the food company. Two years after buying Palforzia’s maker, Aimmune Therapeutics, for $2.6 billion in 2020, Nestlé launched a strategic review of the product due to insufficient uptake. Now the Swiss food giant is working to offload the peanut pill.
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