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news.Preclinical models of acute severe allergic asthma have shown that Alexion Pharmaceuticals' anti-C5 monoclonal antibody can be effectively delivered to the lungs to substantially block airway inflammation and hyper-responsiveness.
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The compound used in the research is a surrogate of eculizumab, Alexion's lead anti-compliment antibody. The study shows that anti-C5 monoclonal antibodies, including eculizumab, can be successfully aerosolized for therapeutic use.
The data were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Immunologists in Boston by Dr Yi Wang, senior research fellow at Alexion.
In the study, the antibody was aerosolized with a standard nebulizer, a device commonly used to deliver asthma medication. A single dose was found to be highly effective in blocking the bronchial inflammation and hyper-responsiveness that provoke airway constriction and have been shown to result in shortness of breath, wheezing, chest tightness and other asthma symptoms in asthmatic patients.
The data also showed that combining the antibody with a corticosteroid was more effective than either therapy alone.
The antibody targets complement – a complex series of blood proteins that work in concert with antibodies.
“Complement activation in the lung may be a critical inflammatory mediator in the development of airway hyper-responsiveness in patients with allergic asthma,” said Dr Paul O'Bryne, EJ Moran Campbell professor of medicine. “The development of an aerosolized form of eculizumab may, therefore, provide an important new tool for the treatment of this disease.”