Food allergy (FA) prevalence and hospitalisations are rising, especially in young children. Families face death from anaphylaxis, social exclusion, reduced quality-of-life (QoL), and out-of-pocket costs >$3500/year. A coming wave of new treatments promises to revolutionise FA, stimulating strong demand for partner diagnostics and driving the FA diagnostics market.

First-line diagnosis is by blood tests (for general or allergen-specific IgE) and skin prick tests that yield many false positives leading to patients being placed on inappropriate and expensive therapies. 

Today’s gold-standard FA diagnostic is double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenge (DBPCFC). Patients consume incrementally increasing amounts of suspect food until a mild reaction versus an indistinguishable low/zero-dose control. However, current non-pharmaceutical grade DBPCFC are unblinded, inaccurate, poorly scalable, and unsafe. This leaves the global population poorly equipped to face ~300,000 annual tests required by vulnerable allergy suffers. Physicians call for better solution. 

Building on pan-European research led by leading British allergologists, Reacta’s is addressing an unmet need for standardised Pharmaceutical grade Oral Food Challenges (OFC’s). The OFC’s enable the delivery of specific doses of a fully masked allergen to patients in a patented mousse-style formulation. Once patients ingest the product, physicians monitor them to establish whether they are allergic. By correlating the precision dose to the time and extent of reaction, the severity of the allergy can be determined. Reacta’s OFC’s deliver specific doses of a fully masked allergen to patients in a patented mousse-style formulation, including a placebo that is indistinguishable in taste and texture
from non-placebo formulations. 

Reacta’s OFCs have been shown to improve the quality of life of patients by providing an indication as to whether they are likely to react to foods carrying ‘may contain’ allergen labels. Reacta’s Peanut, diagnostic kits are already in use as part of numerous clinical trials around the world with Milk and Egg OFCs being launched early 2023.

Reacta’s products are manufactured in a world-class Pharma GMP accredited facility in Wales.

Speaker: Martin Wickham, Chief Commercial Officer, Reacta Healthcare

Martin Wickham is the Chief Commercial Officer at Reacta Healthcare and has been with Reacta since company formation. Martin was previously  Head of Nutrition at Leatherhead Food Research, UK, and Model Gut Platform Leader at the Institute of Food Research, UK. Martin is a Biophysicist with over 20 years’ experience in modelling human digestion. His research interests were centred on understanding human gut physiology, through the development of in vitro models of digestion, with particular emphasis on the human response to complex food and pharmaceutical systems. He is a BBSRC/ Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellow, a Mentor at the Judge Business School , Cambridge, has a PhD from the University of East Anglia and has an MBA from the Durham University Business School.

Location: UK Presentation Theatre: Hall 16, J48