Reacta Healthcare Press Release – 30 January 2024
Reacta Healthcare is a diagnostics company based in North Wales focusing on the development, manufacture, and supply of pharmaceutical grade challenge agents for use in Oral Food Challenges (OFCs) for the diagnosis of food allergies. The company currently supplies products to the clinical research market and is progressing towards a Marketing Authorisation Application (MAA) for its lead product.
Reacta Healthcare’s Advisory Board brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the business, ensuring that the company objectives are aligned to our scientific path in food allergy research and management. In support of this imperative, Reacta has the pleasure of announcing the appointment of Professor Adnan Custovic to the Advisory Board as Clinical Lead. In addition, Professor Ronald van Ree, a long-standing member of the Advisory Board, will be assuming the role of Scientific Lead.
With these two crucial appointments, Reacta Healthcare further improves its clinical and scientific governance. We are thankful to Professors Adnan Custovic and Ronald van Ree, whose participation on our Advisory Board validates the importance of our work in the diagnosis of food allergy.
Professor Custovic leads the Paediatric Allergy Group within the Centre for Paediatrics and Child Health at Imperial College London and is Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Allergy at St. Mary’s Hospital and Royal Brompton Hospital. He is Director of the Imperial College London/Imperial College Healthcare Trust Allergy Centre, one of the World Allergy Organization (WAO) Centres of Excellence.
Professor van Ree is Professor of Molecular and Translational Allergology at the Department of Experimental Immunology and the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of Amsterdam University Medical Centre in The Netherlands. His research group focuses on elucidating the mechanisms of allergic sensitization and the role of allergen structure and exogenous environmental, microbial and dietary factors in this process. Epidemiology of food allergy, in and outside Europe, has been at the centre of his attention for the last two decades.
Professor Custovic noted, “I am excited to join Reacta Healthcare as Clinical Lead of the Advisory Board at this critical juncture along their journey in the food allergy diagnostics space. I have watched the company grow substantially in the past few years and applaud the work that they are doing, especially the innovative development of diagnostics for food allergy in the very young (6 months and upwards). I have had a long-term interest in this area through my prospective studies on early life allergy, and in the early days of the European funded iFAAM study. With several new food allergy therapies in development, Reacta is addressing an unmet need for standardised, pharma grade diagnostics”.
Professor van Ree is delighted to take on the role of Scientific Lead and commented, “I am proactively involved in the food allergy therapy sector, and I am happy to now be associated with the diagnostics space through my new role for Reacta Healthcare. The business and its products have developed rapidly since the nascence of the original peanut challenge meal through to becoming the global leaders in supply of challenges meals to the clinical trials market. Reacta is the pioneer in delivering on the FDA and EMAs challenge on the critical need for standardisation of food allergy diagnosis via OFC at a pharma grade level. I look forward to assisting with their progression towards a Market Authorised diagnostic product”.
With the reinforcement of our Advisory Board, Reacta has additional key building blocks in place to accelerate its development and strengthen its position as global leaders in diagnosis of food allergy.
About Reacta Healthcare:
Reacta Healthcare, established in 2013, operates from a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Deeside, North Wales. The GMP facility is licenced to manufacture oral challenge meals, for use in clinical trials, as auxiliary medicinal products. The Reacta Healthcare challenge meals are currently used to diagnose and monitor food allergy in numerous global therapeutic trials. The business is progressing along a strategic path to marketing authorisation. Patents for the challenge meals have been granted in a number of countries.
Reacta Healthcare is responding to the rapidly evolving food allergy environment, and future plans include expansion into niche areas of food allergen development and manufacture beyond challenge meals.