Edwin H. Kim, MD: Key Findings on Oral Immunotherapy ADP101

During this HCPLive interview, Edwin H. Kim, MD, went into a discussion about some notable data from the phase 1/2 Harmony study on ADP101, an investigational multi-allergen oral immunotherapy (OIT).

Kim is known for his work as associate professor of pediatrics at University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine. The research he discussed on ADP101 had been presented at the 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology (ACAAI).

First, Kim was asked to discuss the Harmony study and any unique aspects of the study design that stood out.

“In 2020, there was the approval of Palforzia as the first treatment for food allergy, and that was specific to peanut allergy,” Kim said. “And it more or less showed that in a protocolized wave, we can have people eating sort of the food that they're allergic to, we can sort of desensitize and make their the immune system less reactive. But what we also learned in the years since then, is that many if not most of our patients are actually allergic to more than one food.”

Kim explained that it is actually uncommon to be only allergic to peanuts, for example.

“You know, the field for the last couple of years has been trying to figure out what's the best strategy to help these folks,” Kim said. “...And so what's unique with this product as well as the study, is they tried to take the approach of still a one size fits all but trying to treat multiple allergies. So their product actually includes all of the top 9 allergy groups all in one medicine at once. Those groups include milk, egg, wheat, and soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, and sesame.”

Kim was also asked about how clinically meaningful the responses generated by ADP101 were in the study. ADP101 had led to clinically meaningful responses in the study that were dependent on the dose, along with a favorable safety and tolerability profile in pediatric individuals with allergies to one or more of the foods

“Yeah, so like I mentioned before, we've seen for peanuts that this can work,” Kim said. “...So the data seems to suggest that yeah, we can equally desensitize some of these other foods. And then the other question we wanted to get a sense of from this study is going to be if you mash them all together in one treatment, does that somehow affect how well one works versus the other? Could it dilute out the effect or anything else like that? And thankfully, that wasn't the case. So it did seem like the results were pretty even across the board for the different foods, and really in line with what we had seen previously in those larger studies for peanut allergy.”

For further information on this topic, view the full interview segment posted above.

Dr. Kim was PI of the UNC site within the Harmony Study. He does not have any personal financial conflicts with Alladapt who sponsored the study.

The quotes used in this discussion were edited for the purposes of clarity.