# Microneedles for treatment of peanut allergy

> **NIH NIH R01** · TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $656,540

## Abstract

Microneedles for treatment of peanut allergy
Peanut allergy is a life-threatening condition. About 1% of the US population (~3 million people) has peanut
allergies, and there is no FDA-approved treatment. Strict avoidance, and a peanut-free diet is the only option
available to manage peanut allergies, which imposes severe limitations on the lifestyle of the patient and their
families, and can lead to nutritional deficiencies. The overall goal of this proposal is to develop a coated
microneedles (MNs) based cutaneous immunotherapy (CIT) a.k.a (MNs-CIT) for peanut allergy. Presently
peanut oral immunotherapy has received much attention. However, a major limitation of oral immunotherapy is
that the peanut oral dose is escalated to thousands of milligrams, which causes adverse effects. Based on our
preliminary data our hypothesis is that MNs coated with peanut allergen can safely deliver peanut allergen in to
the superficial skin-layer to produce long-lasting peanut desensitization. Our specific aims are: (i) Develop PE-
coated MNs and evaluate their short and long term therapeutic effectiveness in treating peanut allergy, (ii)
Characterize the mechanism of peanut MNs-CIT, and (iii) Evaluate therapeutic efficacy in a neonatal pig model
of peanut allergy.
If successful, these studies will provide the foundation to support the development of a novel and safer peanut
allergy immunotherapy treatment.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9993221
- **Project number:** 5R01AI135197-03
- **Recipient organization:** TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Harvinder Singh Gill
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $656,540
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-17 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9993221

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9993221, Microneedles for treatment of peanut allergy (5R01AI135197-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9993221. Licensed CC0.

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