conceptual period

Recipient: Helmholtz Zentrum München German Research Centre for Environmental Health (GmbH)
Funding: GO-Bio initial conceptual phase 2nd round (01/10/2021 to 30/09/2022, EUR 99,999.18)

Bronchial asthma is the most common chronic disease in children. Around 339 million people worldwide currently suffer from asthma. As there is no cure for asthma, current therapies are often administered over long periods of time - sometimes decades. Moreover, there is currently no preventative treatment option.

Various epidemiological studies have shown a natural model for the prevention of asthma: children who grow up on farms have a significantly lower risk of developing asthma than children who live in the same rural area but do not grow up on farms. A significant protective factor is spending time in animal stables. This observation could be transferred to various asthma mouse models. The intranasal application of stable dust extracts can effectively prevent allergic asthma in mice.

The vision of the project is to provide a preventive treatment option for asthma for the first time. The aim is to provide preventive therapy for children with an increased risk of asthma and first signs of disease onset. The long-term goal is to develop an effective nasal spray based on a defined stable dust extract. In the conceptual phase, aspects such as the market and competitive environment as well as the intellectual property situation will be examined, fundamental questions regarding further development will be analysed and a development plan will be drawn up. In line with the announcement, the research project contributes to sharpening life science commercialisation ideas and examining their viability as well as strengthening innovative life science research approaches.

feasibility stage

Recipient: Helmholtz Zentrum München German Research Centre for Environmental Health (GmbH)
Funding: GO-Bio initial feasibility phase 2 (01/10/2022 to 30/09/2024, EUR 552,300.00) 

Bronchial asthma is the most common chronic disease in children. Around 358 million people worldwide suffer from asthma. As there is neither a cure nor a preventative treatment for asthma, current symptomatic therapies are often administered over long periods - sometimes decades. Various epidemiological studies have shown a natural model that can help prevent asthma:

Children who grow up on farms have a significantly lower risk of developing asthma than children who live in the same rural area but not on farms. A significant protective factor is spending time in animal stables. This observation was transferred to various asthma mouse models. The application of stable dust extracts through the nose can effectively prevent allergic asthma in mice. The PreventAsthma-2 research project team recently succeeded in identifying specific substances in barn dust extracts that are most likely responsible for the protective effect. 

The team's visionary, long-term goal is to provide a preventative therapy option for the first time that protects children from developing asthma. With the funding from the GO-Bio initial programme, they will investigate the feasibility of developing a nasal spray based on the identified substances. To this end, these substances will be produced and tested for their protective properties in relation to asthma and allergies. The aim of the project is to obtain one or more substances that have comparable or higher protective activity than cowshed dust extracts.