Mona Kidon, MD: Present, Future Research Landscape for Immunotherapy

In her HCPLive interview segment, Monda Kidon, MD, discussed the latest developments in immunotherapy practices for peanut allergy and her views on future research.

Presently, Kidon holds the position of Director at the Pediatric Allergy Clinic and the Food Allergy Research Center in Israel's Sheba Medical Center.

“At baseline, the future looks amazing,” Kidon said. “I mean, everybody's trying everywhere, and looking at protocols and products. And for example, there was a very nice study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine with a peanut patch which is much safer than usually the regular PALFORZIA, and they did recruit a partly less allergenic group of patients. So they actually could recruit into the study patients that had the reaction at about 300 milligrams of peanut protein, that's about 1 peanut protein. And they looked at their ability to increase that threshold to 2 or 3, which was definitely better compared to placebo.”

Kidon continued her description of recent research in the immunotherapy space for patients with peanut allergy.

“Funny part, and very disappointingly so, was that they did have some anaphylactic reactions of patients who were only put about 250 micrograms of protein as a patch on their back,” she explained. “And they had an anaphylactic reaction requiring adrenaline. So these kids, some of these kids are very, very sensitive. Even that kind of patch looks like something that needs to be done under medical supervision under an allergist, kind of driving them in the driver's seat of doing that type of intervention.”

Kidon noted that she does not believe many trials exist which are attempting to develop either hypoallergenic peanuts or developing the molecule that is less allergenic.

“The problem is that us as humans, being not monogenic mice, none of us will react when we react to 1 epitope of 1 protein,” she explained. “So in peanuts, right now, there are about 18 different proteins with from 3 to 20, different epitopes that IgE can actually connect to, and there is no way you can do so many proteins at so many changes. While when we use the factory, as the peanuts at our factory producing these allergens, we are actually quite certain that we produce all of the allergens that regular peanuts have. And so you can actually affect that, over time, you would expect that this type of treatment is going to be more effective and in the long run.”

Kidon added that her team has “proven some of these theories that we are talking about, that we can affect that same change with the same amount of security and safety for other types of plant-derived allergens like sesame and different kinds of nuts and almonds.”

To find out more about Kidon’s views on new research and her own team’s work, view the full segment above.

The quotes contained in this were edited for clarity. In the prior 12 months, Kidon has received the Israeli Chief Scientist's Office grant for the development of the "Mona Peanut" treatment, and has received a patent for the product.